Kirin to sell its Tokyo HQs to reduce debts

TOKYO: Japanese beverage giant Kirin has decided to sell its Tokyo headquarters in order to reduce debts as it aggressively buys foreign firms in a bid to expand its global reach, a report said Sunday.

Kirin Holdings and its main subsidiary Kirin Brewery Company will sell their headquarters buildings in Tokyo to raise an estimated 15 billion to 30 billion yen ($170 million to $340 million), the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.

The group will rent a different building in Tokyo as its global headquarters, the paper said.

The company will use the money to reduce debts accumulated after a series of major overseas acquisitions, according to the report.

In recent years the group has bought full or major stakes in Australian brewer Lion, Brazilian brewer Schincariol and Philippine brewer San Miguel, among others.

Many Japanese beverage firms have sought to expand overseas while the domestic market suffers chronic slow consumption, a shrinking population and younger people shunning alcohol.

- AFP/fa

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Keylong in Himachal Pradesh freezes at minus 10.4 degrees celsius

SHIMLA: Bone-chilling cold conditions swept across Himachal Pradesh on Sunday with Keylong freezing at a minus 10.4 degrees celsius, a meteorological official said.

While state capital Shimla shivered at 0.9 degree celsius, the minimum temperature at tourist resort Manali was 3 degrees below the freezing point.

Kalpa, around 250 km from here, recorded a low of minus 5 degrees Celsius, whereas Dharamsala was still warm at a minimum of 4.4 degrees. It was minus 0.6 degree in Sundernagar.

The official said the night temperature in Keylong in Lahaul and Spiti district fell further by 3.3 degrees from Saturday's minus 7.1 degrees.

But day temperatures across the state were up by an average of two to five degrees due to the dry weather.

The maximum temperature was 11.5 degrees in Shimla on Saturday, while it was 17.8 degrees in Dharamsala and 17.8 degrees in Solan.

Frost on the roads, making them slippery, has been hampering movement of vehicles, officials said.

The Met office has forecast dry weather in the next few days.

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FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.

Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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Gun Show Near Newtown Goes on Despite Anger

A little more than 40 miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where last month 20 first graders and six staff members were massacred, gun dealers and collectors alike ignored calls to cancel a gun show, and gathered for business in Stamford, Conn.

Four other gun shows with an hour of Newtown, Conn., recently cancelled their events in the wake of the shootings, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza broke in to the elementary school with a semi-automatic assault rifle and three other guns.

The organizers in Stamford emphasized their show only displayed antique and collectible guns, not military style assault weapons like the one used by Lanza in Sandy Hook.

Still, Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia had called for the show to close its doors, calling it "insensitive" to hold so close to the murders.

Gun show participant Sandy Batchelor said he wasn't sure about whether going ahead with the show was "insensitive," but said the shooter should be blamed, not the weapons he used.

"I don't have a solid opinion on [whether it is insensitive]," Batchelor said. "I'm not for or against it. I would defend it by saying it wasnt the gun."

In nearby Waterbury, the community cancelled a show scheduled for this weekend.

"I felt that the timing of the gun show so close to that tragic event would be in bad taste," Waterbury Police Chief Chief Michael J. Gugliotti said.

National Rifle Association News Conference Interrupted by Protesters Watch Video

Gugliotti has halted permits for gun shows, saying he was concerned about firearms changing hands that might one day be used in a mass shooting.

Across the state line in White Plains, N.Y, Executive Rob Astorino also canceled a show, three years after ending a had that had been in place since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. He said he felt the show would be inappropriate now.

But across the country, farther away from Connecticut, attendance at gun shows is spiking, and some stores report they can hardly keep weapons on their shelves with some buyers fearful of that the federal government will soon increase restrictions on gun sales and possibly ban assault weapons altogether.

"We sold 50-some rifles in days," said Jonathan O'Connor, store manager of Gun Envy in Minnesota.

President Obama said after the Sandy Hook shooting that addressing gun violence would be one of his priorities and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she would introduce an assault weapons ban this month.

But it is not just traditional advocates of gun control that have said their need to be changes in gun laws since the horrific school shooting.

Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat but a long-time opponent of gun control who like Hutchison has received an A rating from the NRA, have both come out in support of strengthening gun laws.

In Stamford, gun dealer Stuart English said participants at the gun show there are doing nothing wrong.

"I have to make a living. Life goes on," gun dealer Stuart English said.

ABC News asked English, what he thought about the mayor of Stamford calling the show "insensitive."

"He's wrong," English said. "This is a private thing he shouldn't be expressing his opinion on."

If you have a comment on this story or have a story idea, you can tweet this correspondent @greenblattmark.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Venezuela lawmakers elect Chavez ally as Assembly chief

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan lawmakers re-elected a staunch ally of Hugo Chavez to head the National Assembly on Saturday, putting him in line to be caretaker president if the socialist leader does not recover from cancer surgery.

By choosing the incumbent, Diosdado Cabello, the "Chavista"-dominated legislature cemented the combative ex-soldier's position as the third most powerful figure in the government, after Chavez and Vice President Nicolas Maduro.

"As a patriot ... I swear to be supremely loyal in everything I do, to defend the fatherland, its institutions, and this beautiful revolution led by our Comandante Hugo Chavez," Cabello said as he took the oath, his hand on the constitution.

He had earlier warned opposition politicians against attempting to use the National Assembly to "conspire" against the people, saying they would be "destroyed" if they tried.

Thousands of the president's red-clad supporters gathered outside parliament hours before the vote, many chanting: "We are all Chavez! Our comandante will be well! He will return!"

If Chavez had to step down, or died, Cabello would take over the running of the country as Assembly president and a new election would be organized within 30 days. Chavez's heir apparent, Maduro, would be the ruling Socialist Party candidate.

Chavez, who was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area in mid-2011, has not been seen in public nor heard from in more than three weeks.

Officials say the 58-year-old is in delicate condition and has suffered multiple complications since the December 11 surgery, including unexpected bleeding and severe respiratory problems.

Late on Friday, Maduro gave the clearest indication yet that the government was preparing to delay Chavez's inauguration for a new six-year term, which is scheduled for Thursday.

'CHAVEZ IS PRESIDENT'

Maduro said the ceremony was a "formality" and that Chavez could be sworn in by the Supreme Court at a later date.

The opposition says Chavez's absence would be just the latest sign that he is no longer fit to govern, and that new elections should be held in the South American OPEC nation.

Brandishing a copy of the constitution after his win in the Assembly, Cabello slammed opposition leaders for writing a letter to foreign embassies in which they accused the government of employing a "twisted reading" of the charter.

"Get this into your heads: Hugo Chavez was elected president and he will continue to be president beyond January 10. No one should have any doubt ... this is the constitutional route," he said as fellow Socialist Party lawmakers cheered.

The opposition sat stony-faced. One of their legislators had earlier told the session that it was not just the head of state who was ill, "the republic is sick."

Last year, Chavez staged what appeared to be a remarkable comeback from the disease to win re-election in October, despite being weakened by radiation therapy. He returned to Cuba for more treatment within weeks of his victory.

Should the president have to step down after 14 years in office, a new vote would probably pit Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver and union leader, against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.

Capriles lost to Chavez in October's presidential election.

"I don't think Maduro would last many rounds in a presidential race. He's not fit for the responsibility they have given him," Capriles said after the vice president's appearance on state television.

Chavez's condition is being watched closely by leftist allies around Latin American who have benefited from his oil-funded generosity, as well as investors attracted by Venezuela's lucrative and widely traded debt.

The country boasts the world's biggest crude reserves. Despite the huge political upheaval Chavez's exit would cause, the oil industry is not likely to be affected much in the short term, with an extension of "Chavismo" keeping projects on track, while a change in parties could usher in more foreign capital.

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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AHTC unable to verify accuracy of reasons for software sale

SINGAPORE: Chairman of Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) Sylvia Lim has responded to the recent statement by Dr Teo Ho Pin - on the sale of the software formerly owned by the town councils managed by the People's Action Party (PAP) to Action Information Management Pte Ltd (AIM) in 2011, prior to the General Election.

She said AHTC is not able to verify the accuracy of the reasons for the sale cited in the statement on January 2 by Dr Teo, who is the coordinating chairman of PAP town councils.

Ms Lim said the documents AHTC has on hand, including the tender documents, do not disclose many of the details mentioned.

She also said the reasons given underscore three fundamental facts.

First, the PAP-managed town councils sold off the computer and financial systems developed with public monies to a vehicle of the PAP, just prior to the General Election.

Second, according to the most recent statement of AIM Chairman, Mr S Chandra Das, AIM "as a PAP company" wanted to "be helpful to the PAP Town Councils".

Third, the PAP sees no issue with an arrangement allowing them to terminate the software agreements with any town council with one month's notice, if there's a material change in the town council's membership.

Ms Lim also questioned the one-month termination clause in the AIM contract, which Dr Teo considered "reasonable".

She said he himself indicated that it would take "maybe 18 to 24 months, or even longer" to assess new software and develop a replacement system.

Ms Lim said the question of how the PAP-managed town councils acted in the public and residents' interest in relinquishing their ownership of the systems to AIM has still not been answered.

"We leave it to the public to make their own judgement," she said.

In his 26-paragraph statement on January 2, Dr Teo explained why and how the PAP-run town councils came to have a sale and lease back deal with the PAP-owned AIM.

He said it would be better for the 14 PAP-run town councils to consolidate their software rights in a single party, which would then manage them on behalf of all the town councils, as well as source vendors to improve the system and address the deficiencies.

He added there's no basis to suggest that the transaction for AIM to provide computer services to the PAP-run town councils was improper or disadvantageous to the town councils.

- CNA/fa

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In US, juveniles now entitled to life imprisonment with parole for homicidal cases

MUMBAI: In the US, a minor arrested in a rape and murder case would have been tried in a regular criminal court and got sentenced to life in prison if convicted. Till about six months ago such a person would not even have been entitled to parole in over 20 states and be imprisoned till death. Many states provided for mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole even for juvenile offenders. Last June, the US Supreme Court set aside these laws as unconstitutional by a slim 5-4 majority.

The majority decision, written by Justice Elena Kagan, said that the policy violates the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling relied on earlier case laws to hold that children under 18 lack the maturity to make sound decisions, and that mandatory sentencing leaves no room for discretion and towards a chance to reform. The SC held, "Imposition of a State's most severe penalties on juvenile offenders cannot proceed as though they were not children."

The US SC had earlier in 2005 in another precedent setting judgment in Roper Versus Simmons eliminated the juvenile death penalty which was being awarded for the last three decades. Five years later in 2010, in Graham Versus Florida state, the SC ruled that in non-homicidal crimes, life sentence without parole was unconstitutional. That decision affected over a 100 prisoners convicted of committing, before they turned 18, crimes like rape, armed robbery and kidnapping. In its latest decision on juvenile offenders, the US SC went a step further and insisted that judges and juries must even in killings by minors, "consider the characteristics of a defendant and the details of his offense before sentencing." The characteristics would include his life circumstances, violence in his life among other parameters. Parole is early conditional realease of a convict under supervision.

The cases before the court concerned two men who were involved in killings when they were 14 in 1999 when they tried to rob an Arkansas video store. Kuntrell Jackson then 14 was with two older youth when the three attempted the robbery but things went wrong and one of the older youths shot and killed a store clerk.

The US with around 25 of its States is one of the few countries that allows juveniles to be prosecuted as adults and sentenced to life without parole. There are more than 2,500 people currently in jail nationwide who fall under this category; and 79 of them were sentenced when they were 14 or younger. In September 2011, a report by the US Justice Department stated that a majority of the 50 states offered discretionary judicial waiver to transfer juvenile cases to adult criminal courts and 15 states had mandatory waiver for certain serious crimes. In the 1980s and 1990s, legislatures in nearly every state expanded transfer laws that allowed or required the prosecution of juveniles in adult criminal courts.

US is now studying the effects of such transfers on the crime statistics, but Mumbai advocate Swapnil Kothari, "Following the US example Indian legislature cannot afford to catnap even for a minute and amend the law to treat not only juvenile offenders as adults in some cases under the Indian Penal Code, but also, to treat the rapes of minors and small infants as rarest of rare." Juveniles' crimes are termed 'delinquencies' even if the offence in as serious as murder in criminal justice jurisdictions globally and every in North Americas and Europe have established special youth courts to deal with such under-age offenders for petty crimes to serious felonies. Although the Juvenile laws are made to ensure that youth in conflict with law are reformed as they are still young and amenable to correction, in US, states like Missisippi has laws that send a young offender to 30 years' in prison for sexual felonies for the first offence and to 40 years for the second. A felony is a serious crime and includes burglary, kidnapping, or murder.

In England, however, along with 'youth courts' the law allows juveniles to be tried along with adult co-defendents or by them selves in a regular criminal court and attract sentences that can extend over 14 years too or be of an "indeterminate nature''.

The law in England looks at a "vicious will'' to hold him accountable for a crime.

In England, the famous Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, drew the line between "infant" and "adult" at the point where one could understood one's actions way back in 1760. But UK which now has the minimum age for criminal responsibility at 10 and is facing a debate, is justifying it as an age where children understand between right and wrong. In France, the special youth courts handle trials of juvenile offenders even for serious crimes like rape and killings and have set up enclosed educational centres for remand under judicial supervision.

Asserted Kothari, "In line with India's ancestral English laws, the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000 and the Indian Penal Code, 1860 with its concomitant procedural acts should be revamped to ensure speedy justice. The Delhi gang-rape case must be treated as rarest of rare, to ensure that the five accused are sent to the gallows with the sixth juvenile who must meet his maximum three years with severity

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FDA proposes sweeping new food safety rules

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed the most sweeping food safety rules in decades, requiring farmers and food companies to be more vigilant in the wake of deadly outbreaks in peanuts, cantaloupe and leafy greens.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

The FDA's proposed rules would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Read More..

Quadruple Amputee Gets Two New Hands on Life

It's the simplest thing, the grasp of one hand in another. But Lindsay Ess will never see it that way, because her hands once belonged to someone else.

Growing up in Texas and Virginia, Lindsay, 29, was always one of the pretty girls. She went to college, did some modeling and started building a career in fashion, with an eye on producing fashion shows.

Then she lost her hands and feet.

Watch the full show in a special edition of "Nightline," "To Hold Again," TONIGHT at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC

When she was 24 years old, Lindsay had just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's well-regarded fashion program when she developed a blockage in her small intestine from Crohn's Disease. After having surgery to correct the problem, an infection took over and shut down her entire body. To save her life, doctors put her in a medically-induced coma. When she came out of the coma a month later, still in a haze, Lindsay said she knew something was wrong with her hands and feet.

"I would look down and I would see black, almost like a body that had decomposed," she said.

The infection had turned her extremities into dead tissue. Still sedated, Lindsay said she didn't realize what that meant at first.

Quadruple Amputee Undergoes Hand Transplant Surgery Watch Video

After Hand Transplant, Relearning How to Hold Watch Video

"There was a period of time where they didn't tell me that they had to amputate, but somebody from the staff said, 'Oh honey, you know what they are going to do to your hands, right?' That's when I knew," she said.

After having her hands and feet amputated, Lindsay adapted. She learned how to drink from a cup, brush her teeth and even text on her cellphone with her arms, which were amputated just below the elbow.

"The most common questions I get are, 'How do you type,'" she said. "It's just like chicken-pecking."

PHOTOS: Lindsay Ess Gets New Hands

Despite her progress, Lindsay said she faced challenges being independent. Her mother, Judith Aronson, basically moved back into her daughter's life to provide basic care, including bathing, dressing and feeding. Having also lost her feet, Lindsay needed her mother to help put on her prosthetic legs.

"I've accepted the fact that my feet are gone, that's acceptable to me," Lindsay said. "My hands [are] not. It's still not. In my dreams I always have my hands."

Through her amputation recovery, Lindsay discovered a lot of things about herself, including that she felt better emotionally by not focusing on the life that was gone and how much she hated needing so much help but that she also truly depends on it.

"I'm such an independent person," she said. "But I'm also grateful that I have a mother like that, because what could I do?"

Lindsay said she found that her prosthetic arms were a struggle.

"These prosthetics are s---," she said. "I can't do anything with them. I can't do anything behind my head. They are heavy. They are made for men. They are claws, they are not feminine whatsoever."

For the next couple of years, Lindsay exercised diligently as part of the commitment she made to qualify for a hand transplant, which required her to be in shape. But the tough young woman now said she saw her body in a different way now.

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Chavez swearing-in can be delayed: Venezuelan VP

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez's formal swearing-in for a new six-year term scheduled for January 10 can be postponed if he is unable to attend due to his battle to recover from cancer surgery, Venezuela's vice president said on Friday.

Nicolas Maduro's comments were the clearest indication yet that the Venezuelan government is preparing to delay the swearing-in while avoiding naming a replacement for Chavez or calling a new election in the South American OPEC nation.

In power since 1999, the 58-year-old socialist leader has not been seen in public for more than three weeks. Allies say he is in delicate condition after a fourth operation in two years for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area.

The political opposition argues that Chavez's presence on January 10 in Cuba - where there are rumors he may be dying - is tantamount to the president's stepping down.

But Maduro, waving a copy of the constitution during an interview with state TV, said there was no problem if Chavez was sworn in at a later date by the nation's top court.

"The interpretation being given is that the 2013-2019 constitutional period starts on January 10. In the case of President Chavez, he is a re-elected president and continues in his functions," he said.

"The formality of his swearing-in can be resolved in the Supreme Court at the time the court deems appropriate in coordination with the head of state."

In the increasing "Kremlinology"-style analysis of Venezuela's extraordinary political situation, that could be interpreted in different ways: that Maduro and other allies trust Chavez will recover eventually, or that they are buying time to cement succession plans before going into an election.

Despite his serious medical condition, there was no reason to declare Chavez's "complete absence" from office, Maduro said. Such a declaration would trigger a new vote within 30 days, according to Venezuela's charter.

RECOVERY POSSIBLE?

Chavez was conscious and fighting to recover, said Maduro, who traveled to Havana to see his boss this week.

"We will have the Commander well again," he said.

Maduro, 50, whom Chavez named as his preferred successor should he be forced to leave office, said Venezuela's opposition had no right to go against the will of the people as expressed in the October 7 vote to re-elect the president.

"The president right now is president ... Don't mess with the people. Respect democracy."

Despite insisting Chavez remains president and there is hope for recovery, the government has acknowledged the gravity of his condition, saying he is having trouble breathing due to a "severe" respiratory infection.

Social networks are abuzz with rumors he is on life support or facing uncontrollable metastasis of his cancer.

Chavez's abrupt exit from the political scene would be a huge shock for Venezuela. His oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor, while critics call him a dictator seeking to impose Cuban-style communism on Venezuelans.

Should Chavez leave office, a new election is likely to pitch former bus driver and union activist Maduro against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.

Capriles lost to Chavez in the October presidential election, but won an impressive 44 percent of the vote. Though past polls have shown him to be more popular than all of Chavez's allies, the equation is now different given Maduro has received the president's personal blessing - a factor likely to fire up Chavez's fanatical supporters.

His condition is being watched closely by Latin American allies that have benefited from his help, as well as investors attracted by Venezuela's lucrative and widely traded debt.

"The odds are growing that the country will soon undergo a possibly tumultuous transition," the U.S.-based think tank Stratfor said this week.

(Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga; editing by Christopher Wilson)

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CES show to see changing of guard in tech sector

WASHINGTON: The inexorable push for mobility in gadgets has reshaped the electronics industry, a shift that reflects a changing of the guard at the world's biggest consumer technology show.

Gone from the 2013 International CES, to be held January 8-11 in Las Vegas, are giants such as Microsoft, and longtime tech stalwarts such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard are taking a back seat to firms focused on more portable, or even wearable, devices.

There will of course be big, dazzling displays of televisions that are smarter and bolder. However, a key focus is likely to be on devices that are mobile but can remain connected via the Internet cloud, from tablets to wrist watches, to Wi-Fi ski goggles.

"There is a changing of the guard," said Danielle Levitas, a consumer tech analyst at the research firm IDC.

"The shift we've seen over the past years has been on the mobile aspects of technology versus home entertainment. This continues to accelerate."

Emblematic of the shift is the choice of the main keynote speaker -- Qualcomm chief executive Paul Jacobs.

"Most people have never heard of Qualcomm. People might know they have a stadium with that name somewhere," said Roger Kay, a technology analyst and consultant with Endpoint Technologies.

Semiconductor firm Qualcomm quietly overtook Intel in market value in 2012, a sign of the growing importance of mobile chips that reduce battery drag and are popular on smartphones and tablets, mostly using ARM technology licensed by British-based ARM Holdings.

"Qualcomm is the opposite of Intel," said Kay, who points out Qualcomm's reluctance to follow its rival's strategy of branding devices with "Intel Inside."

"It has been shy of the limelight and wants its partners to get all that credit. They are a reluctant hero. So important, and yet so unknown."

With mobile devices gaining ground, "folks are interested in the services that are attached to consumer electronics at the show," said Kevin Spain of Emergence Capital Partners, among the venture capital firms attending.

Spain said delivery of video over mobile devices is just starting, opening up possibilities for new ventures.

"Everything that is cloud is obviously white-hot in the venture community," Spain said.

"People are interested in sharing content across a variety of devices and the cloud plays an integral role in that. Consumers expect to have a variety of content be available on demand: video, music, anytime, anywhere."

Another focus at CES will be improving batteries and charging for all those mobile devices, according to Stu Lipoff, fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

"One of the major limitations of portable devices is they are getting smaller and asked to do more, so people are finding innovative and creative ways of charging," he said.

CES will feature a range of power pads on which a device can be placed for charging, Lipoff said, but other firms are eyeing technologies "where you can put a transmitter in the room and it will charge the device" from several feet away.

James McQuivey at Forrester Research said CES has evolved from a show in which manufacturers would sell their wares to a branding event.

"It is shifting to a more abstract or long-term vision of technology," he said.

"It's about branding, demonstrating you are innovating for the future."

McQuivey said old guard firms like Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which have been struggling amid a move to mobile devices must demonstrate they are still part of the future.

"It's a challenge to get back in the innovation game," he said.

McQuivey said CES is different than in the past because the industry now revolves around a handful of big companies whose platforms are a key.

"Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are creating platforms on which everyone is innovating," he said. "CES is living in the shadow of these large platforms."

The 2013 CES features a record 1.87 million square feet (170,000 square meters) of exhibit space, with some 3,000 exhibitors displaying gadgets for digital health, connected cars, smart home devices and a broad array of communications and entertainment gear. Attendance is expected to be in line with last year's record 156,000.

Eight automakers will exhibit at the 2013 CES, the largest number ever, showing off "infotainment" technology, crash avoidance and other "smart" vehicle technologies.

Tech giant Apple is not a participant but 440 exhibitors will showcase accessories for Apple devices in the "iLounge."

"With the largest show floor in history, more innovative technologies and services will launch at the 2013 CES than anywhere else in the world," said Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts the show.

The CES will also showcase areas such as sustainable technologies, the $90 billion "Mommy Tech" market for functional products from house cleaning to wearable fashions, fitness and health, mobile wallets, advances in using the Internet "cloud," gaming hardware and software, high-tech toys and devices for education.

-AFP/ac

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Alagiri furious over Karunanidhi's suggestion to hand over DMK's reign to Stalin

CHENNAI: DMK chief M Karunanidhi's older son and Union minister M K Alagiri on Friday reacted angrily to a suggestion by his father that younger son and party treasurer M K Stalin would take over the party affairs after him.

When reporters quizzed him at the Chennai airport about media reports that Stalin would take over the party reins after his father, Alagiri said sarcastically, "The DMK is not a Mutt. Ask this question to Karunanidhi."

Alagiri also told reporters to read an interview given by Stalin to a Tamil journal that hit the stands on Thursday. In the interview, to a question as to who will succeed Karunanidhi, Stalin recalled his father's earlier remark on the issue - "The DMK is not a Sankara Mutt (of Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu, where a successor is chosen by the senior pontiff)."

The question of Karunanidhi's successor has been a contentious issue between the siblings for long. On Thursday, at a party meeting Karunanidhi said his son Stalin would continue "development work of society" after him. His cryptic remark set off speculation that he was hinting at Stalin taking over the mantle of DMK chief after him.

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CDC: 1 in 24 admit nodding off while driving

NEW YORK (AP) — This could give you nightmares: 1 in 24 U.S. adults say they recently fell asleep while driving.

And health officials behind the study think the number is probably higher. That's because some people don't realize it when they nod off for a second or two behind the wheel.

"If I'm on the road, I'd be a little worried about the other drivers," said the study's lead author, Anne Wheaton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the CDC study released Thursday, about 4 percent of U.S. adults said they nodded off or fell asleep at least once while driving in the previous month. Some earlier studies reached a similar conclusion, but the CDC telephone survey of 147,000 adults was far larger. It was conducted in 19 states and the District of Columbia in 2009 and 2010.

CDC researchers found drowsy driving was more common in men, people ages 25 to 34, those who averaged less than six hours of sleep each night, and — for some unexplained reason — Texans.

Wheaton said it's possible the Texas survey sample included larger numbers of sleep-deprived young adults or apnea-suffering overweight people.

Most of the CDC findings are not surprising to those who study this problem.

"A lot of people are getting insufficient sleep," said Dr. Gregory Belenky, director of Washington State University's Sleep and Performance Research Center in Spokane.

The government estimates that about 3 percent of fatal traffic crashes involve drowsy drivers, but other estimates have put that number as high as 33 percent.

Warning signs of drowsy driving: Feeling very tired, not remembering the last mile or two, or drifting onto rumble strips on the side of the road. That signals a driver should get off the road and rest, Wheaton said.

Even a brief moment nodding off can be extremely dangerous, she noted. At 60 mph, a single second translates to speeding along for 88 feet — the length of two school buses.

To prevent drowsy driving, health officials recommend getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, treating any sleep disorders and not drinking alcohol before getting behind the wheel.

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Online:

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

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Ex-USC Player: Painkiller Injections Caused Heart Attack

Despite stated label risks of possible fatal heart attack, stroke or organ failure, college football players across the country are still being given injections of a powerful painkiller on game days so they can play while injured, an ABC News investigation has found.

The drug, a generic version of Toradol, is recommended for the short-term treatment of post-operative pain in hospitals but has increasingly been used in college and professional sports, and its use is not monitored by the NCAA, the governing body of college sports.

Only two of the country's top football programs, Oklahoma and the University of Nebraska, reported to ABC News that they have limited or stopped the use of the drug in the wake of growing concern about its risks.

Which Top-Ranked College Football Teams Use Toradol?

Oklahoma said it stopped using the painkillers in 2012 after using them repeatedly in 2010 and 2011.

Nebraska said its doctors now restrict its use.

SEND TIPS About Painkiller Use in College Sports to Our Tipline

"While team physicians reserve the option to use injectable Toradol, it is rarely prescribed, and its use has been avoided this season following reports of heightened concern of potential adverse effects," Nebraska said in a statement to ABC News.

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

Despite Risks, College Football Still Uses Powerful Painkiller Watch Video

The top two college football programs, Notre Dame and Alabama, refused to answer questions from ABC News about the painkiller. They play for the national college championship on Jan. 7.

Controversy surrounding the drug has grown this year following claims by former USC lineman Armond Armstead that he suffered a heart attack after the 2010 season, at age 20, following shots of generic Toradol administered over the course of the season by the team doctor and USC personnel.

"I thought, you know, can't be me, you know? This doesn't happen to kids like me," Armstead told ABC News.

The manufacturers' warning label for generic Toradol (ketorolac tromethamine) says the drug is not intended for prolonged periods or for chronic pain and cites gastrointestinal bleeding and kidney failure as possible side effects of the drug.

In addition, like other drugs in its class, the generic Toradol label warns "may cause an increased risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events, myocardial infarction (heart attack), and stroke, which can be fatal."

"This risk may increase with duration of use," the so-called black box warning reads.

In a lawsuit against the school and the doctor, Dr. James Tibone, Armstead claims the school ignored the stated risks of the drug and never told him about them.

"He was a race horse, a prize race horse that needed to be on that field no matter what," said Armstead's mother Christa. "Whether that was a risk to him or not."

Armstead says he and many other USC players would receive injections of what was known only as "the shot" in a specific training room before big games and again at half-time.

"No discussion, just go in. He would give the shot and I would be on my way," Armstead told ABC News.

Armstead said the shot made him feel "super human" despite severe ankle, and later shoulder pain, and that without it, he never could have played in big USC games against Notre Dame and UCLA.

"You can't feel any pain, you just feel amazing," the former star player said.

USC declined to comment on Armstead's claims, or the use of Toradol to treat Trojan players.

An ABC News crew and reporter were ordered off the practice field when they tried to question USC coach Lane Kiffin about the use of the painkiller. USC says the ABC News crew was told to leave because they had not submitted the appropriate paperwork in advance to attend the practice session.

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Eleven dead in Damascus gas station blast

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - At least 11 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded at a crowded petrol station in the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, opposition activists said.

The station was packed with people queuing for fuel that has become increasingly scarce during the country's 21-month-long insurgency aimed at overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.

The semi-official al-Ikhbariya television station showed footage of 10 burnt bodies and Red Crescent workers searching for victims at the site.

The opposition Revolution Leadership Council in Damascus said the explosion was caused by a booby-trapped car.

There was no immediate indication of who was responsible for the bombing in the Barzeh al-Balad district, whose residents include members of the Sunni Muslim majority and other religious and ethnic minorities.

"The station is usually packed even when it has no fuel," said an opposition activist who did not want to be named. "There are lots of people who sleep there overnight, waiting for early morning fuel consignments."

It was the second time that a petrol station has been hit in Damascus this week. Dozens of people were incinerated in an air strike as they waited for fuel on Wednesday, according to opposition sources.

In northern Syria, rebels were battling to seize an air base in their campaign against the air power that Assad has used to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, a much higher death toll than previously thought.

DRAMATIC ADVANCES

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of rebel fighters were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and Damascus.

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said much of the base was still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions cut off by the rebels, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" on rebel-controlled areas.

Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by shelling and bombing nearby towns.

NIGHTLY BOMBARDMENTS

In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.

"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.

Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.

"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"

Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.

Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble. The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.

In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.

On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people died in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for fuel.

The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.

Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.

The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to step down. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford and Giles Elgood)

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Delhi gang-rape suspects to be charged in court

NEW DELHI: Five men accused of gang-raping a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in a deadly crime that repulsed the nation are to be formally charged in court on Thursday.

Police will lay out evidence against them of rape, kidnapping and murder after the woman died at the weekend from the horrific injuries inflicted on her during an ordeal that has galvanised disgust over rising sex crimes in India.

The men, mostly residents of New Delhi slums, will face the death penalty if convicted, India's Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde has said, amid public clamour for their execution.

"It is compulsory for all the accused to present themselves before the magistrate," explained Rana Dasgupta, a legal officer at the Saket district court complex where armed police maintained tight security on Thursday morning.

The magistrate, working from a small room with 30 chairs, "will admit the charge sheet presented by the police and then give a copy of the charge sheet to all the accused," Dasgupta added.

This document -- reportedly 1,000 pages long -- will detail the evidence collected, the most powerful of which is expected to be a statement from the victim after the attack and an account from her boyfriend who was with her at the time.

He was beaten during his attempts to save the medical student after the couple were lured onto the private bus by the reportedly drunk gang after watching a film at night.

A sixth suspect in the case who is believed to be a minor aged 17 will not be charged in the Saket court on Thursday, a Delhi police spokesman told AFP. Detectives are awaiting the results of a bone test to verify his age.

The trial of the suspects has been fast-tracked and Altamas Kabir, the chief justice of India, has cautioned against letting public anger overwhelm the due process of the law.

Lawyers at the district court in New Delhi have decided they will not defend the suspects, meaning that the government will have to appoint advocates for them.

"Let us not get carried away. A swift trial should not be at the cost of a fair trial," chief justice Kabir was quoted as saying in the local media on Thursday.

Protesters have massed in Indian cities daily since the December 16 assault demanding the government do more to combat crime against women, with tougher penalties for offenders and even chemical castration being considered.

The latest incident, though far from rare in a country where gang rapes are commonplace, has led to deep soul-searching in the media and the country's political class about the treatment of Indian women.

Analysis has focused on the deeply patriarchal Indian society, in which misogyny and sexism run deep and women are often second-class citizens, as well as the difficulty of rape victims in dealing with social stigma and the police.

On December 28, it emerged that a 17-year-old girl had committed suicide after police allegedly tried to persuade her to drop a complaint of gang-rape and instead either accept a cash settlement or even marry one of her attackers.

The government has set up three separate commissions to look into the incident and suggest changes in the law, with one minister suggesting new anti-rape legislation should be named after the victim.

This sparked a controversy as her name has not been disclosed in line with legal protections given to the victims of sex crime and their families, who face social stigma.

The brother of the victim, speaking from the family's home village in northern Uttar Pradesh state, said they would not object if the government wanted to name a new law after her.

"My father feels if they want to name the new law after her, they can go ahead, it will be like a tribute in her memory," he told the Indian Express newspaper.

The brother also pleaded that the family should be left alone to grieve their loss.

"The public anger is justified but my sister's story should not be made into a spectacle," he said.

A recent poll found India to be the worst in the G20 group of nations for women because of child marriage, abuse and female foeticide, which has led to a badly skewed sex ratio in the country of 1.2 billion people.

-AFP/ac

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S Ramakrishnan takes over charge as Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre director

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Senior scientist with four decades of experience in rocketry, S Ramakrishnan has assumed charge as Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre here.

Ramakrishnan, who was director of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) here, succeeds P S Veeraraghavan.

A Padma Shri award recipient, Ramakrishnan is an expert in aerospace propulsion, launch vehicle systems and project management.

He had also served as Director (projects) at VSSC and Chairman, Flight Readiness Review and played a key role in accomplishing the PSLV-C11-Chandrayan Mission, a press release here said.

The new director was one of the scientists who took part in the mission to realise India's first satellite launch vehicle SLV-3. He was the mission director for PSLV C1, C2, C3 and C4 flights.

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

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Online:

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

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

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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Obama Signs 'Fiscal Cliff' Bill With Autopen

Jan 3, 2013 12:53am

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

HONOLULU, Hawaii — President Obama has signed the “fiscal cliff” legislation into law via autopen from Hawaii, where he is vacationing with his family.

The bill to avert the “fiscal cliff” arrived at the White House late this afternoon and it was immediately processed, according to a senior White House official. A copy was delivered to the president in Hawaii for review. He then directed the bill to be signed by autopen back in Washington, D.C.

The Bush administration deemed in 2005 that the use of the autopen is constitutional, although President George W. Bush never used the mechanical device to replicate his signature on a bill.

The office of legal counsel found at the time that Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution allows the president to use the autopen to sign legislation, stating “the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill to sign it.”

Obama has used the autopen twice in the past to sign legislation, both times while he was overseas.

Use of the autopen has been controversial.  Conservative groups alleged last summer that Obama used an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of Navy SEALs killed in a Chinook crash in Afghanistan — a charge the White House disputed flatly as false.

In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was criticized for using an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of fallen troops.

And in 1992 then-Vice President Dan Quayle even got into some hot water over his use of the autopen on official correspondence during an appearance on “This Week with David Brinkley.”

Obama, who arrived back in Hawaii early Wednesday morning to continue his family vacation, spent the afternoon golfing with friends at the Marine Corps base at Kaneohe Bay.

Obama is slated to remain in Hawaii through Saturday.

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl contributed to this report

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Central African Republic rebels halt advance, agree to peace talks

DAMARA, Central African Republic (Reuters) - Rebels in Central African Republic said they had halted their advance on the capital on Wednesday and agreed to start peace talks, averting a clash with regionally backed troops.

The Seleka rebels had pushed to within striking distance of Bangui after a three-week onslaught and threatened to oust President Francois Bozize, accusing him of reneging on a previous peace deal and cracking down on dissidents.

Their announcement on Wednesday gave the leader only a limited reprieve as the fighters told Reuters they might insist on his removal in the negotiations.

"I have asked our forces not to move their positions starting today because we want to enter talks in (Gabon's capital) Libreville for a political solution," said Seleka spokesman Eric Massi, speaking by telephone from Paris.

"I am in discussion with our partners to come up with proposals to end the crisis, but one solution could be a political transition that excludes Bozize," he said.

Bozize on Wednesday sacked his Army Chief of Staff and took over the defense minister's role from his son, Jean Francis Bozize, according to a decree read on national radio, a day after publicly criticizing the military for failing to repel the rebels.

The advance by Seleka, an alliance of mostly northeastern rebel groups, was the latest in a series of revolts in a country at the heart of one of Africa's most turbulent regions - and the most serious since the Chad-backed insurgency that swept Bozize to power in 2003.

Diplomatic sources have said talks organized by central African regional bloc ECCAS could start on January 10. The United States, the European Union and France have called on both sides to negotiate and spare civilians.

Central African Republic is one of the least developed countries in the world despite its deposits of gold, diamonds and other minerals. French nuclear energy group Areva mines the country's Bakouma uranium deposit - France's biggest commercial interest in its former colony.

RELIEF IN BANGUI

News of the rebel halt eased tension in Bangui, where residents had been stockpiling food and water and staying indoors after dark.

"They say they are no longer going to attack Bangui, and that's great news for us," said Jaqueline Loza in the crumbling riverside city.

ECCAS members Chad, Congo Republic, Gabon and Cameroon have sent hundreds of soldiers to reinforce CAR's army after a string of rebel victories since early December.

Gabonese General Jean Felix Akaga, commander of the regional force, said his troops were defending the town of Damara, 75 km (45 miles) north of Bangui and close to the rebel front.

"Damara is a red line not to be crossed ... Damara is in our control and Bangui is secure," he told Reuters. "If the rebellion decides to approach Damara, they know they will encounter a force that will react."

Soldiers armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket propelled grenade launchers and truck-mounted machineguns had taken up positions across the town, which was otherwise nearly-abandoned.

Some of the fighters wore turbans that covered their faces and had charms strung around their necks and arms meant to protect them against enemy bullets.

Chad's President Idriss Deby, one of Bozize's closest allies, had warned the rebels the regional force would confront them if they approached the town.

Chad provided training and equipment to the rebellion that brought Bozize to power by ousting then-president Ange Felix Patasse, who Chad accused of supporting Chadian dissidents.

Chad is also keen to keep a lid on instability in the territory close to its main oil export pipeline and has stepped in to defend Bozize against insurgents in the past.

A CAR government minister told Reuters the foreign troop presence strengthened Bozize's bargaining position ahead of the Libreville peace talks.

"The rebels are now in a position of weakness," the minister said, asking not to be named. "They should therefore stop imposing conditions like the departure of the president."

Central African Republic is one of a number of countries in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local soldiers track down the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group which has killed thousands of civilians across four nations.

France has a 600-strong force in CAR to defend about 1,200 of its citizens who live there.

Paris used air strikes to defend Bozize against a rebellion in 2006. But French President Francois Hollande turned down a request for more help, saying the days of intervening in other countries' affairs were over.

(Additional reporting by Paul-Marin Ngoupana in Bangui and Jon Herskovitz in Johannesburg; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Janet Lawrence)

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Delhi gang-rapists tried to run victim over

NEW DELHI: A gang of rapists who assaulted and murdered a woman on a bus in New Delhi last month tried to run her over with the vehicle after the attack, reports said Wednesday, citing a grisly police account of the incident.

Her boyfriend, who was beaten up and thrown off the bus after the girl had been repeatedly raped, managed to pull her to safety just in time, police are set to allege in a 1,000-page charge sheet to be presented in court on Thursday.

The 23-year-old female medical student, whose ordeal has brought simmering anger about widespread sex crime in India to the boil, bit three of her attackers as she attempted to fight them off, local newspapers and TV reports said.

These injuries on the suspects, as well as forensic evidence such a blood, semen and hair samples and the testimony of the injured boyfriend, are expected to form the main evidence against the accused, reports and police sources said.

Five men have been arrested and are expected on Thursday to formally face murder and rape charges in a fast-track court set up to try them. A sixth suspect is aged 17 and is expected to be tried in a court for juveniles.

"The woman and her friend were stripped and thrown out of the bus," The Indian Express reported, "Her friend pulled her away when he saw the bus reversing to run her over."

The Times of India newspaper said the charge sheet would likely begin with details on how the driver of the private vehicle, who allegedly took part in the rape, got his group of friends together and set out for a joyride.

One of the charges against the accused relates to the destruction of evidence, the paper said, since the driver had tried to wash the bus and had burned the clothes that were snatched from the victim.

The woman died at the weekend after a 13-day struggle to survive injuries so grievous that her intestines had to be removed. She also underwent three major surgeries and suffered a cardiac arrest before being flown to Singapore.

The brutality and horrific nature of the attack has led to protests in the capital and elsewhere, and has prompted calls for the death penalty for the rapists.

The government, which has faced a wave of public anger over the attack, on Tuesday set up a special 13-member committee to look into safety issues and review the functioning of Delhi police on a regular basis.

A panel to recommend changes to the criminal law dealing with sexual crimes was set up last week.

-AFP/fl

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Naming anti-rape law after girl will be an honour: Family

BALLIA, UP: A day after Union minister Shashi Tharoor favoured naming the revised anti-rape law after the Delhi gang-rape victim, her family members on Wednesday said they have no objection to it and the move would be an honour to the girl.

The family members of the 23-year-old girl said that "if her name is made public for this purpose, they have no objection to it".

Talking to the father and brother of the girl said that "if the government names the revised anti-rape law after her, they have no objection and it would be an honour to her".

Tharoor had yesterday favoured making public the identity of the gang-rape victim wondering what interest was served by keeping her name under wraps.

Tharoor, the minister of state for human resources development, had also said the revised anti-rape legislation should be named after the victim if her parents do not have any objection.

"Wondering what interest is served by continuing anonymity of #DelhGangRape victim. Why not name&honour her as a real person w/own identity?" he asked on micro-blogging site Twitter.

"Unless her parents object, she should be honoured&the revised anti-rape law named after her. She was a human being w/a name,not just a symbol," Tharoor, who is known for speaking his mind, said.

On reports of Telugu filmmaker Ramana Gaddam planning to make changes in his upcoming film to highlight the brutal gang rape, the girl's brother said before doing so he should meet them and give information about the storyline.

He said the director would have to clarify what he wants to portray in the movie.

Asked about the financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh announced by the Uttar Pradesh government and assistance of Rs 15 lakh and job announced by Delhi government, the brother said though announcements have been made, they are yet to receive the assistance.

However, the girl's father said he was satisfied with the announcements made by the government.

The family members termed as misleading reports in the media that the girl was about to get married.

On a question regarding police chargesheet in the case, the brother said they do not want to comment on the issue and only want justice.

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

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Online:

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

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

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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Obama Hails 'Cliff' Deal, Warns of Next Fiscal Fight

Minutes after the House of Representatives approved a bipartisan Senate deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" and preserve Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans making less than $400,000 per year, President Obama praised party leaders and wasted little time turning to the next fiscal fight.

"This is one step in the broader effort to strengthen our economy for everybody," Obama said.

Obama lamented that earlier attempts at a much larger fiscal deal that would have cut spending and dealt with entitlement reforms failed. He said he hoped future debates would be done with "a little less drama, a little less brinksmanship, and not scare folks quite as much."

But Obama drew a line in the sand on the debt ceiling, which is set to be reached by March.

"While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether they should pay the bills for what they've racked up," Obama said. "We can't not pay bills that we've already incurred."

An hour after his remarks, Obama boarded Air Force One to return to his planned Hawaiian holiday vacation, reuniting with his family, who have been vacationing there since just before Christmas.

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Congress Reaches Agreement Watch Video

House Republicans agreed to the up-or-down vote Tuesday evening, despite earlier talk of trying to amend the Senate bill with more spending cuts before taking a vote. The bill delays for two months tough decisions about automatic spending cuts that were set to kick in Wednesday.

A majority of the Republicans in the GOP-majority House voted against the fiscal cliff deal. About twice as many Democrats voted in favor of the deal compared to Republicans. One hundred fifty-one Republicans joined 16 Democrats to vote against the deal, while 172 Democrats carried the vote along with 85 Republicans.

The Senate passed the same bill by an 89-8 vote in the wee hours of New Year's Day. If House Republicans had tweaked the legislation, there would have been no clear path for its return to the Senate before a new Congress is sworn in Thursday.

The vote split Republican leaders in the House. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, voted yes, and so did the GOP's 2012 vice presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., the No. 2 Republican in the House, voted no. It was his opposition that had made passage of the bill seem unlikely earlier in the day.

The deal does little to address the nation's long-term debt woes and does not entirely solve the problem of the "fiscal cliff."

Indeed, the last-minute compromise -- far short from a so-called grand bargain on deficit reduction -- sets up a new showdown on the same spending cuts in two months amplified by a brewing fight on how to raise the debt ceiling beyond $16.4 trillion. That new fiscal battle has the potential to eclipse the "fiscal cliff" in short order.

"Now the focus turns to spending," said Boehner in a statement after the vote. "The American people re-elected a Republican majority in the House, and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the 'balanced' approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt."

Republicans hope that allowing the fiscal cliff compromise, which raised taxes without an equal amount of spending cuts, will settle the issue of tax rates for the coming debates on spending.

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