Bombay HC asks Centre to file reply on Sadhvi Pragya's petition challenging validity of NIA

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court has directed the Union government to respond to a petition filed by Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, one of the prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, challenging the constitutional validity of the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and justice Sambhaji Shinde have given the Centre time till February 4, 2013 to file its reply.

The Sadhvi had challenged an April 2011 order of the Centre transferring probe in the blasts case to the NIA. The petition claimed that the Union government could not have done so without a nod from the state government.

Claiming that there was a political conspiracy behind the move, the petition said: "NIA does not have retrospective power to re-investigate into those offences where charge sheet has been already filed by state investigating agencies."

The court however questioned whether an accused had any locus standi or right under the law to challenge transfer of investigations.

An RDX bomb had exploded on September 29, 2008 in Malegaon killing six and injuring 101.Twelve persons were arrested in the case, including the Sadhvi and serving Lt. Col. of the Indian Army, Prasad Purohit.

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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 rejoin his family in Hawaii, where they have been since before Christmas.

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

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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U.N. raises Syria death toll to 60,000

AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) - More than 60,000 people have died in the Syrian uprising and civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday, dramatically raising the death toll in a struggle that shows no sign of ending.

Dozens were killed in a Damascus suburb when a government air strike turned a petrol station into an inferno, incinerating drivers who had rushed there for a rare chance to fill their tanks, activists said.

"I counted at least 30 bodies. They were either burnt or dismembered," said Abu Saeed, an activist who arrived at the area an hour after the raid occurred at 1:00 PM (1100 GMT) in Muleiha, a suburb on the eastern edge of the capital.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said in Geneva that researchers cross-referencing seven sources over five months of analysis had listed 59,648 people killed in Syria between March 15, 2011 and November 30, 2012.

"The number of casualties is much higher than we expected and is truly shocking," she said. "Given that there has been no let-up in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013."

There was no breakdown by ethnicity or information about whether the dead were rebels, soldiers or civilians. There was also no estimate of an upper limit of the possible toll.

Previously, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, had put the toll at around 45,000 confirmed dead, but said the real number was likely to be much higher.

FATAL RUSH FOR PETROL

Mulaiha, the target of Wednesday's air strike, is a residential and industrial area in the eastern Ghouta region of Damascus that also houses a Syrian air defense base.

The activists said rockets were fired from the base at the petrol station and a nearby residential area after the air raid.

"Until the raid, Muleiha was quiet. We have been without petrol for four days and people from the town and the countryside rushed to the station when a state consignment came in," Abu Fouad, another activist at the scene, said by phone.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces control the center of the capital, while rebels and their sympathizers hold a ring of southern and eastern suburbs that are often hit by air strikes.

Video footage taken by activists showed the body of a man in a helmet still perched on a motorcycle amid flames engulfing the scene. Another man was shown carrying a dismembered body.

The video could not be verified. The government bars access to the Damascus area to most international media.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a separate air strike killed 12 members of a family, most of them children, in Moadamiyeh, a southwestern area near the center of Damascus where rebels have fought for a foothold.

The Syrian conflict began in March 2011 with peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule but turned into an armed revolt after months of government repression.

Insurgents trying to topple Assad see his air power as their main threat. They hold swathes of eastern and northern provinces, as well as some outlying parts of Damascus, but have been unable to protect their territory from relentless attack by helicopters and jets.

In the north, rebels, some from Islamist units, attacked the Afis military airport near Taftanaz air base, firing machineguns and mortars at helicopters on the ground to try and make a dent in Assad's air might, the Observatory said.

The al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham Brigade and other units in northwestern Idlib province were attacking the base, which is near the main north-south highway linking Damascus to Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, the Observatory said.

In recent months, rebel units have besieged military bases, especially along the highway, Syria's main artery.

The Observatory's director, Rami Abdelrahman, said the attack was the latest of several attempts to capture the base. A satellite image of the airport shows more than 40 helicopter landing pads, a runway and aircraft hangars.

Syrian state media gave no immediate account of the Damascus air strikes or the fighting in the north.

"FOR GOD'S EYES"

Both sides have been accused of carrying out atrocities in the 21-month-old conflict, but the United Nations says the government and its allies have been more culpable.

In the latest evidence of atrocities, Internet video posted by Syrian rebels shows armed men, apparently fighters loyal to Assad, stabbing two men to death and stoning them with concrete blocks in a summary execution lasting several minutes.

Reuters could not verify the provenance of the footage or the identity of the perpetrators and their victims. The video was posted on Tuesday but it was not clear where or when it was filmed. However it does clearly show a summary execution and torture, apparently being carried out by government supporters.

At one point, one of the perpetrators says: "For God's eyes and your Lord, O Bashar," an Arabic incantation suggesting actions being carried out in the leader's name.

The video was posted on YouTube by the media office of the Damascus-based rebel First Brigade, which said it had been taken from a captured member of the shabbiha pro-government militia.

The perpetrators show off for the camera, smiling for close-up shots, slicing at the victims' backs, then stabbing them and bashing them with large slabs of masonry.

In Damascus, Assad's forces fired artillery and mortars at the eastern districts of Douma, Harasta, Irbin and Zamlaka, where rebels are active, activists living there said.

Syria's civil war is the longest and deadliest conflict to emerge from uprisings that began sweeping the Arab world in 2011 and has developed a significant sectarian element.

Rebels, mostly from the Sunni Muslim majority, confront Assad's army and security forces, dominated by his Shi'ite-derived Alawite sect, which, along with some other minorities, fears revenge if he falls.

U.N.-led diplomatic peace efforts have stumbled. Western and many Sunni Arab states demand Assad's immediate removal, an idea resisted by Russia, China and Syria's Shi'ite ally Iran.

The rebels say they will not negotiate unless Assad, who has vowed to fight to the death, leaves power.

More than 110 people, including at least 31 of Assad's soldiers and militiamen, were killed in Syria on the first day of 2013, according to the Observatory, which tracks the conflict from Britain using a network of contacts inside the country.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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US manufacturing rebounds in December

WASHINGTON: US manufacturing activity expanded slightly in December after contracting the previous month, the ISM monthly survey showed on Monday.

The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing sector index rose to 50.7 last month from 49.5 in November, with 50 the break-even line between growth and contraction.

The index has hovered around that line for the past six months, the ISM said, reflecting weakness in both US and global economic growth.

Only seven of 18 manufacturing industries covered in the ISM survey actually reported growth in the month, and overall production growth slowed.

But the employment sub-index rose to 52.7 from 48.4, showing the industry returned to hiring at a modest clip in December.

- AFP/de

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Maharashtra CM plays down Pawar's threat

MUMBAI: Taking a dig at NCP chief Sharad Pawar for his remark that NCP might reconsider continuing its alliance with the UPA in 2014 elections to Lok Sabha and state assembly, Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan said on Tuesday it was fine if the party has decided to sit in opposition.

"Let the results come...if they (NCP) want to sit in the opposition, then what is the issue," Chavan told reporters here when asked to comment on the NCP chief's statement.

Ruling out the possibility of mid-term polls at Centre, Chavan said the NCP and Congress had been contesting local-level elections against each other.

"I don't think there is any possibility of mid-term polls. We contest elections against each other at the local level," he said.

On state government's drought mitigation programme, the chief minister said that "so far, Rs 900 crore have been spent for this purpose, while Rs 1,000-1,100 crore would be additionally required to tackle the drought-like situation".

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Clinton receiving blood thinners to dissolve clot

WASHINGTON (AP) — Doctors treating Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for a blood clot in her head said blood thinners are being used to dissolve the clot and they are confident she will make a full recovery.

Clinton didn't suffer a stroke or neurological damage from the clot that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell at her home in early December, doctors said in a statement Monday.

Clinton, 65, was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday when the clot turned up on a follow-up exam on the concussion, Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines said.

The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.

In their statement, Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mount Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said Clinton was making excellent progress and was in good spirits.

Clinton's complication "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist who is director of Duke University's stroke center. He is not involved in Clinton's care.

The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull. It's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein said.

Blood thinners usually are enough to treat the clot and it should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, Goldstein said.

Clinton returned to the U.S. from a trip to Europe, then fell ill with a stomach virus in early December that left her severely dehydrated and forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East. Until then, she had canceled only two scheduled overseas trips, one to Europe after breaking her elbow in June 2009 and one to Asia after the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Her condition worsened when she fainted, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from the virus. It was announced Dec. 13.

This isn't the first time Clinton has suffered a blood clot. In 1998, midway through her husband's second term as president, Clinton was in New York fundraising for the midterm elections when a swollen right foot led her doctor to diagnose a clot in her knee requiring immediate treatment.

Clinton had planned to step down as secretary of state at the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Whether she will return to work before she resigns remained a question.

Democrats are privately if not publicly speculating: How might her illness affect a decision about running for president in 2016?

After decades in politics, Clinton says she plans to spend the next year resting. She has long insisted she had no intention of mounting a second campaign for the White House four years from now. But the door is not entirely closed, and she would almost certainly emerge as the Democrat to beat if she decided to give in to calls by Democratic fans and run again.

Her age — and thereby health — would probably be a factor under consideration, given that Clinton would be 69 when sworn in, if she were elected in 2016. That might become even more of an issue in the early jockeying for 2016 if what started as a bad stomach bug becomes a prolonged, public bout with more serious infirmity.

Not that Democrats are willing to talk openly about the political implications of a long illness, choosing to keep any discussions about her condition behind closed doors. Publicly, Democrats reject the notion that a blood clot could hinder her political prospects.

"Some of those concerns could be borderline sexist," said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who worked for Clinton when she was a senator. "Dick Cheney had significant heart problems when he was vice president, and people joked about it. He took the time he needed to get better, and it wasn't a problem."

It isn't uncommon for presidential candidates' health — and age — to be an issue. Both in 2000 and 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had to rebut concerns he was too old to be commander in chief or that his skin cancer could resurface.

Two decades after Clinton became the first lady, signs of her popularity — and her political strength — are ubiquitous.

Obama had barely declared victory in November when Democrats started zealously plugging Clinton as their strongest White House contender four years from now, should she choose to take that leap.

"Wouldn't that be exciting?" House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared in December. "I hope she goes. Why wouldn't she?"

Even Republicans concede that were she to run, Clinton would be a force to be reckoned with.

"Trying to win that will be truly the Super Bowl," Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker and 2012 GOP presidential candidate, said in December. "The Republican Party today is incapable of competing at that level."

Americans admire Clinton more than any other woman in the world, according to a Gallup poll released Monday — the 17th time in 20 years that Clinton has claimed that title. And a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 57 percent of Americans would support Clinton as a candidate for president in 2016, with just 37 percent opposed. Websites have already cropped up hawking "Clinton 2016" mugs and tote bags.

Beyond talk of future politics, Clinton's three-week absence from the State Department has raised eyebrows among some conservative commentators who questioned the seriousness of her ailment after she canceled planned Dec. 20 testimony before Congress on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton had been due to discuss with lawmakers a scathing report she had commissioned on the attack. It found serious failures of leadership and management in two State Department bureaus were to blame for insufficient security at the facility. Clinton took responsibility for the incident before the report was released, but she was not blamed. Four officials cited in the report have either resigned or been reassigned.

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Associated Press writer Ken Thomas in Washington and AP Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

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Senate Approves 'Fiscal Cliff' Deal, Sends to House

Two hours after a midnight deadline for action, the Senate passed legislation early New Year's Day to avert the so-called fiscal cliff with an overwhelming vote of 89-8.

Senate passage set the stage for a final showdown in the House, where a vote could come as early as today.

"While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay," President Obama said in a statement shortly after the vote.

"There's more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I'm willing to do it. But tonight's agreement ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest Americans."

The bill extends Bush-era tax cuts permanently for individuals making less than $400,000 per year and couples making less than $450,000 but allows the top marginal tax rate on incomes above those levels to rise to 39.6 percent.

Capital gains taxes would rise to 20 percent from 15 percent.

The measure would raise the estate tax from 35 to 40 percent for estates larger than $5 million, prevent the alternative minimum tax from hammering millions of middle-class workers and extend unemployment benefits for one year.

'Fiscal Cliff': Lawmakers Scramble for Last-Minute Deal Watch Video

Lawmakers also decided at the last minute to use the measure to prevent a $900 pay raise for each member of Congress due to take effect this spring.

The steep "sequester" budget cuts scheduled to go into effect with the New Year -- a $1.2 trillion hit to defense and domestic programs -- would be postponed for two months.

"I've said all along our most important priority is protecting middle-class Americans, this legislation does that," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said early this morning prior to the vote.

The deal at hand does little to address the nation's long-term debt woes, however, 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 -- could set 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.

Reid said he is "disappointed" they were unable to achieve a broader deal but that the compromise was necessary.

"We tried," he said. "If we did nothing, the threat of a recession is very real."

Speaking after Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the deal an "imperfect solution" and noted this should not be the model on how things get done in the Senate.

McConnell also thanked Vice President Joe Biden, who visited Capitol Hill late Monday night and brokered the deal with Senate Republicans.

The measure must now move to the Republican-led House.

Five Senate Republicans and three Democrats voted against the plan, but the large margin of passage was seen as boosting the bill's prospects in the House, even though fiscal conservatives were poised to vehemently oppose the deal when it comes to the floor for a vote.

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said the House would not vote on any Senate-passed measure "until House members, and the American people, have been able to review" it.

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Syrian government forces go on attack on first day of year

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Government war planes bombed opposition-held areas of Syria and President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels fought on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on New Year's Day on Tuesday.

A year ago, many diplomats and analysts predicted Assad would leave power in 2012. But despite international pressure and rebel gains, he has proved resilient.

His inner circle remains largely intact and retains control of the armed forces, even if it relies on air strikes and artillery power to hold back the rebels fighting to overthrow him.

The air force pounded Damascus's eastern suburbs on Tuesday and rebel-held areas of Aleppo, the second city and commercial capital, as well as several rural towns and villages, opposition activists said.

Opposition video posted on the Internet showed plumes of grey smoke rising in Irbin, in the east of Damascus.

Residents of the capital began the new year to the boom of artillery hitting southern and eastern outskirts, which form a rebel-held arc around the capital. The heart of the city is still firmly under government control.

In the city center, soldiers manning checkpoints fired celebratory gunfire at midnight although the streets were largely deserted.

"How can they celebrate? There is no 'Happy New Year'," Moaz al-Shami, an opposition activist who lives in central Mezzeh district, said over Skype.

He said rebel fighters attacked one checkpoint in Berzeh district on Tuesday morning. Opposition groups said mortar bombs hit the southwest suburb of Daraya, which the army attacked on Monday to retake it from rebels.

An estimated 45,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which started in early 2011 with peaceful protests demanding democratic reforms but turned into an armed uprising after months of attacks on protesters by security forces.

A resident of the central city of Homs said artillery shelling had smacked into its Old City on Tuesday.

Homs lies on the north-south highway and parts of the ancient city have been leveled during months of clashes. Government forces ousted rebels from Homs early last year but militants have slowly crept back in.

"The Old City is under siege. There is shelling from all sides," said the resident, who asked to remain anonymous.

A video posted on YouTube showed the bodies of three boys who activists said were arrested at a government checkpoint on their way home from school in Damascus' Jobar suburb on Sunday.

One of the boys, who appear to have barely reached adolescence, has his hands tied behind his back. Another had a large open wound on his throat.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports and the footage.

The opposition-linked Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, reported 160 people killed on the final day of 2012, including at least 37 government troops.

BOMBARDMENT

The civil war in Syria is the longest and deadliest of the conflicts that rose out of the uprisings that have swept through the Arab world over the past two years.

Many Sunni Muslims, the majority in Syria, back the rebellion, while Assad, a member of the Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect, is backed by some minorities who fear revenge if he falls. His family has ruled Syria since his father seized power in a coup 42 years ago.

Assad's forces now rely more on air strikes and artillery bombardment rather than infantry. Residential areas where rebels are based have been targeted, killing many civilians.

Rebels have taken swathes of the northern mountains and eastern desert but have struggled to hold cities, saying they are defenseless against Assad's Soviet-equipped air force.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war have failed, with the rebels refusing to negotiate unless Assad leaves power and the president pledging to fight until death. Western and Arab states have called for him to go. He is backed by Russia and Iran.

In the last days of 2012, international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi called on countries to push the sides to talk, saying Syria faced a choice of "hell or the political process".

One Damascus resident, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said the usual New Year's Eve crowds were absent from the increasingly isolated capital.

"There was hardly anyone on the streets, no cars, no pedestrians. Most restaurants, cafes and bars were empty," she said.

Some young people gathered at three bars in the old city.

"There was music but nobody was dancing. They just sat there with a drink in their hands and smoking. I don't think I saw one person smile," she said.

The midnight gunfire caused alarm.

"It was very scary. No one knew what was going on. People got very nervous and started making phone calls. But then I discovered that at least on my street, the gunfire was celebratory."

(Editing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan)

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Football: Brazil starlet Lucas relishing PSG challenge

DOHA: Brazilian international midfielder Lucas Moura said Tuesday he is ready to embrace the "challenge" at an evolving Paris Saint-Germain.

Lucas, 20, signed from Sao Paulo in the summer on a four-and-a-half-year deal worth 40 million euros as PSG held off competition from the likes of Manchester United and Real Madrid to snare a player hailed as one of the bright hopes of the Brazilian team.

"It's a real challenge for me," said Lucas, who has scored three goals in 22 appearances for Brazil.

"PSG is in full evolution. (Sporting director) Leonardo helped me a lot to take the decision to sign when I could have continued with my former team in Brazil until season's end.

"It's a very important step in my career. There are stronger competitions in Europe. PSG has a long history with Brazilian players and I hope I'll be able to write a new page in this history."

PSG president Nasser al-Khelaifi added: "We're very happy to start the year with one of the world's best players."

Lucas, who has joined his new teammates at a training camp in Qatar, could make his debut in a friendly against Qatari champions Lekhwiya on Wednesday, four days before PSG's French Cup round-of-64 match against Arras in Calais.

Khelaifi said the club was not planning to recruit any more players in the January transfer window, adding however that "anything could happen".

"We've got a great team with some great players, I don't think we need to recruit," he said.

"We've got a month ahead of us. For the moment, we're not planning on recruiting anyone but I don't know, there could be injuries, anything can happen."

Khelaifi added: "PSG today wants to build a big European club and place itself among the best in Europe and the world.

"We have to spend money for that and act like the other big clubs. If we hadn't have spent this much, we wouldn't be at this level."

- AFP/fa

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