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

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What Happens If We Go Over the Fiscal Cliff?

America is swiftly approaching the fiscal cliff.

President Obama and congressional leaders have talked for weeks with varying degrees of frequency and success at compromising, and one precept resonates throughout the public statements of politicians and economists: the so-called "fiscal cliff" would be a very bad thing.

But what actually happens if Washington takes us over it?

As has been well documented, the "cliff" is not one thing, but a ball of expiring economic provisions that lead to automatic policy changes at year's end, loosely grouped under the catch phrase. They fall into two categories, taxes and spending.

Should we fall off the cliff, the tax code would change most dramatically with the expiration of the so-called "Bush tax cuts," which created new brackets and lowered tax rates for both middle-class and high earners. According to the Tax Policy Center at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, the average American taxpayer would see a tax hike of $3,446, ABC's David Muir reported for "World News."

Where do the hikes fall, exactly? For many tax brackets, rates would jump by at least three percentage points. The middle class would see the worst of it, according to analysis from the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research arm that studies policy changes at Congress's request.

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo|Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

For high earners, married couples making more than $222,300 but less than $397,000, rates would jump from 33 percent to 36 percent. For the highest earners, couples making over $397,000, taxes would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.

But they'd rise for almost everyone else, too. Couples making $145,900 - $222,300 would see a rate jump from 28 percent to 31 percent. Couples making $72,300 - $145,900 would see rates jump from 25 percent to 28 percent.

The middle class would take the biggest hit: Married couples earning $60,350 - $72,300 would see tax rates jump from 15 percent to 28 percent. That means that without any credits or deductions, a couple making $65,000 would go from taking home $55,250 to taking home $46,800 next year if Congress and the president fail to strike a deal.

The cliff's tax implications go beyond the simple income-tax rate: The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and the estate tax are also on the table with year-end deadlines.

The AMT is a tax that prevents high earners from escaping income-tax liability by claiming too many deductions. Taxpayers over a certain income add back certain deductions to see if they must pay a minimum rate. Ever since Bush's tax cuts, Congress has repeatedly extended an "AMT patch" to maintain the income threshold. According to the Congressional Research Service, if Congress doesn't act again this year, that threshold will drop from $74,450 to $45,000 for married couples and from $48,450 to $33,750 for individuals, exposing more people to the alternative minimum.

The estate tax, demonized by Republicans as the dreaded "death tax," would change significantly. Right now, estates of over $5.12 million are taxed at a maximum of 35 percent. If Congress doesn't act, next year estates of over $1 million will be taxed at 55 percent.

No one likes paying taxes, but the spending side of the cliff isn't supposed to be all that fun, either.

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Bombs kill 23 across Iraq as sectarian strife grows

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 23 people were killed and 87 wounded in attacks across Iraq on Monday, police said, underlining sectarian and ethnic divisions that threaten to further destabilize the country a year after U.S. troops left.

Tensions between Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise this year. Militants strike almost daily and have staged at least one big attack a month.

The latest violence followed more than a week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community.

No group claimed responsibility for any of Monday's attacks, which targeted government officials, police patrols and members of both the Sunni and Shi'ite communities.

Seven people from the same Sunni family were killed by a bomb planted near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad.

In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla, also in the south, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing two other people, police said.

"We heard the sound of a big explosion and the windows of our office shattered. We immediately lay on the ground," said 28-year-old Mohammed Ahmed, who works at a hospital near the site of the explosion.

"After a few minutes I stood up and went to the windows to see what happened. I saw flames and people lying on the ground."

In the capital Baghdad, five people were killed by a parked car bomb targeting pilgrims before a Shi'ite religious rite this week, police and hospital sources said.

Although violence is far lower than during the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, about 2,000 people have been killed in Iraq this year following the withdrawal last December of U.S. troops, who led an invasion in 2003 to overthrow Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

SUNNIS PROTEST

Violence also hit Iraq's disputed territories, over which both the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region claim jurisdiction.

Three militants and one Kurdish guard were killed in the oil-producing, ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, where militants driving a car packed with explosives tried to break into a Kurdish security office.

Earlier on Monday, two policemen were killed in Kirkuk when a bomb they were trying to detonate exploded prematurely. An army official and his bodyguard were also killed in a drive-by shooting in the south of the city.

Kirkuk lies at the heart of a feud between Baghdad and Kurdistan over land and oil rights, which escalated last month when both sides deployed their respective armies to the swath of territory along their contested internal boundary.

Efforts to ease the standoff stalled when President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence, suffered a stroke and was flown abroad for medical care in December.

Maliki then detained the bodyguards of his Sunni finance minister, which ignited anti-government protests in the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold on the border with Syria.

A lecturer in law at Baghdad University said the protests could help create the conditions for militant Islamist groups like al Qaeda to thrive.

"Raising tension in Anbar and other provinces with mainly Sunni populations is definitely playing into the hands of al Qaeda and other insurgent groups," Ahmed Younis said.

More than 1,000 people protested in the city of Samarra on Monday and rallies continued in Ramadi, center of the protests, and in Mosul, where about 500 people took to the streets.

In the city of Falluja, where protesters have also staged large rallies and blocked a major highway over the past week, gunmen attacked an army checkpoint, killing one soldier.

Protesters are demanding an end to what they see as the marginalization of Sunnis, who dominated the country until the U.S.-led invasion. They want Maliki to abolish anti-terrorism laws they say are used to persecute them.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, himself a Sunni, was forced to flee a protest in Ramadi when demonstrators pelted him with stones and bottles.

The civil war in neighboring Syria, where majority Sunnis are fighting to topple a ruler backed by Shi'ite Iran, is also whipping up sectarian sentiment in Iraq.

"The toppling of President Bashar al-Assad and empowerment of Sunnis (in Syria) will definitely encourage al Qaeda to regain ground," Younis said.

(Reporting by Ali al-Rubaie in Hilla, Mustafa Mahmoud and Omar Mohammed in Kirkuk, Ali Mohammed in Baquba and Ahmed Rasheed and Aseel Kami in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Despite emerging deal, US to miss fiscal cliff deadline

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers missed a deadline to avoid the "fiscal cliff" budget crunch Monday but inched towards a deal to ease the worst impact of the crisis by heading off economy-busting tax hikes.

In dramatic New Year's Eve brinkmanship, Republicans and the White House reached an agreement that means only the richest Americans will pay more tax, but were still deadlocked on how to avert $109 billion in automatic government spending cuts.

Despite the emerging deal, the economy will technically go over the cliff at midnight after aides to Republican leaders in the House of Representatives said no vote on a pact could be scheduled in time on Monday.

Senators meanwhile were still hoping for a late-night vote if a deal is finalized. The legislation would then go to a House vote on Tuesday.

While automatic spending cuts and tax hikes will come into force on January 1, global stock markets will be closed on New Year's Day, giving lawmakers a few more hours of breathing room before panic over the US economy sets in.

"If a deal is reached, there's little difference between a vote tonight or tomorrow to give members a chance to review," a House Republican source said.

President Barack Obama earlier said a deal was close though not done and the top Senate Republican negotiator Mitch McConnell, who thrashed out a compromise with Vice President Joe Biden, agreed.

"It appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year's tax hike is within sight. It's not done. There are still issues left to resolve, but we're hopeful that Congress can get it done," Obama said at the White House.

Sources said the deal would include a two-month postponement of the sequester, the sweeping package of automatic government spending cuts that is feared, especially by the Pentagon.

It would also mean a return to Bill Clinton-era tax rates for top earners to 39.6 percent, starting at a threshold of annual household earnings of $450,000 and above.

Obama had originally campaigned for tax hikes to kick in for those making $250,000 and above and his acceptance of a higher threshold has already angered liberals, though still represents a political victory.

As he tried to sell the emerging deal to his Democratic Party's liberal base, he said it would extend tax credits for clean energy firms and also unemployment insurance for two million people due to expire later Monday.

It was also expected to include an end to a temporary two percent cut to payroll taxes for Social Security retirement savings and Medicare health care programs for seniors and changes to inheritance and investment taxes.

The president angered Republicans in remarks in which he warned -- in what is certain to be a bitter fight over cutting the deficit -- that he was not done with seeking higher taxes for the rich.

"Now, if Republicans think that I will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone... then they've another thing coming," Obama said, and also poked fun at the glacial pace of Congressional deliberations.

Republicans immediately took to the floor of the Senate to complain.

Senator John McCain accused Obama of ridiculing Republicans and of needlessly antagonizing House of Representatives' members who will be required to vote for an eventual deal.

Republican Senator Bob Corker said his heart was pounding with disappointment at Obama's remarks.

"I know the president has fun heckling Congress. I think he lost probably numbers of votes with what he did," he said.

"It's unfortunate he doesn't spend as much time solving problems as he does with campaigns and pep rallies."

Signs that a deal could be close cheered investors Friday as US markets rose before closing for the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 166.03 points (1.28 percent) at 13,104.14.

Even as a deal neared, both sides were gearing up for the next legislative showdown over the need to lift the government's statutory borrowing limit of $16.4 trillion, which was reached Monday.

The Treasury will now take extraordinary measures to keep the government afloat for an undisclosed period of time until the ceiling is raised. Republicans are already demanding spending cuts in return.

"I think there is going to be a pretty big showdown next time when we go to the debt limit," McCain told CNN.

-AFP/ac

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Global rights bodies slam India for 'weak' rape laws

NEW DELHI: The Indian government has come under attack from global human rights bodies for its inadequate laws against sexual violence or treatment of survivors.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said, "The government needs to act now to prevent sexual assault, aggressively investigate and prosecute perpetrators, and ensure the dignified treatment of survivors."
The US embassy, in a statement, also mourned the death of the victim — ""We are deeply saddened to learn that the victim of a horrific assault in New Delhi Dec 16 has died," an embassy statement said. "As we honour the memory of this brave young woman, we also recommit ourselves to changing attitudes and ending all forms of gender-based violence which plagues every country in the world."

Meanwhile, UNICEF drew attention to the fact that an alarmingly large number of victims of sexual violence in India are children. "It is alarming that too many of these cases are children. One in three of the rape victims is a child. More than 7,200 children , including infants are raped every year. Given the stigma attached to rapes, especially when it comes to children, this most likely is only the tip of the ice berg," said Mr. Louis-Georges Arsenault, UNICEF Representative to India.

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Clinton's blood clot an uncommon complication

The kind of blood clot in the skull that doctors say Hillary Rodham Clinton has is relatively uncommon but can occur after an injury like the fall and concussion the secretary of state was diagnosed with earlier this month.

Doctors said Monday that an MRI scan revealed a clot in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind Clinton's right ear.

The clot did not lead to a stroke or neurological damage and is being treated with blood thinners, and she will be released once the proper dose is worked out, her doctors said in a statement.

Clinton has been at New York-Presbyterian Hospital since Sunday, when the clot was diagnosed during what the doctors called a routine follow-up exam. At the time, her spokesman would not say where the clot was located, leading to speculation it was another leg clot like the one she suffered behind her right knee in 1998.

Clinton had been diagnosed with a concussion Dec. 13 after a fall in her home that was blamed on a stomach virus that left her weak and dehydrated.

The type of clot she developed, a sinus venous thrombosis, "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 neurologist Dr. Larry Goldstein. He is director of Duke University's stroke center and has no role in Clinton's care or personal knowledge of it.

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 explained.

It should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, he said.

Dr. Joseph Broderick, chairman of neurology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, also called Clinton's problem "relatively uncommon" after a concussion.

He and Goldstein said the problem often is overdiagnosed. They said scans often show these large "draining pipes" on either side of the head are different sizes, which can mean blood has pooled or can be merely an anatomical difference.

"I'm sure she's got the best doctors in the world looking at her," and if they are saying she has no neurological damage, "I would think it would be a pretty optimistic long-term outcome," Broderick said.

A review article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 describes the condition, which more often occurs in newborns or young people but can occur after a head injury. With modern treatment, more than 80 percent have a good neurologic outcome, the report says.

In the statement, Clinton's doctors said she "is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff."

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Online:

Medical journal: http://dura.stanford.edu/Articles/Stam_NEJM05.pdf

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Hillary Clinton Hospitalized With Blood Clot

Dec 30, 2012 8:11pm

(MICHAL CIZEK/AFP/Getty Images)

Secretary Hillary Clinton was hospitalized today after a doctors doing a follow-up exam discovered a blood clot had formed, stemming from the concussion she sustained several weeks ago.

She is being treated with anti-coagulants and is at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours, Deputy Assistant Secretary Philippe Reines said.

Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion. They will determine if any further action is required, Reines said.

Clinton, 65, originally fell ill from a stomach virus following a whirlwind trip to Europe at the beginning of the month, which caused such severe dehydration that she fainted and fell at home, suffering a concussion. No ambulance was called and she was not hospitalized, according to a state department official.

The stomach virus had caused Clinton to cancel a planned trip to North Africa and the United Arab Emirates, and also her scheduled testimony before Congress at hearings on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

According to a U.S. official, the secretary had two teams of doctors, including specialists, examine her after the fall.  They also ran tests to rule out more serious ailments beyond the virus and the concussion. During the course of the week after her concussion, Clinton was on an IV drip and being monitored by a nurse, while also recovering from the pain caused by the fall.

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Chavez suffers new post-surgery complications

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is suffering further complications linked to a respiratory infection that hit him after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba, his vice president said in a somber broadcast on Sunday.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba to visit Chavez in the hospital as supporters' fears grow for the ailing 58-year-old socialist leader, who has not been seen in public nor heard from in three weeks.

Chavez had already suffered unexpected bleeding caused by the six-hour operation on December 11 for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area, and officials say doctors then had to fight a respiratory infection.

"Just a few minutes ago we were with President Chavez. He greeted us and he himself talked about these complications," Maduro said in the broadcast, adding that the third set of complications arose because of the respiratory infection.

"Thanks to his physical and spiritual strength, Comandante Chavez is confronting this difficult situation."

Maduro, flanked by his wife Attorney-General Cilia Flores, Chavez's daughter Rosa Virginia and her husband, Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, said he would remain in Havana while Chavez's condition evolved.

Chavez's resignation for health reasons, or his death, would upend politics in the OPEC nation where his personalized brand of oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor but a pariah to critics who call him a dictator.

The president's allies have been openly discussing the possibility that he may not be able to return to swear in for his third six-year term on the constitutionally mandated date of January 10.

Opposition leaders say a postponement would be another signal Chavez is not in a fit state to govern and that new elections should be called to choose his replacement.

They believe they have a better shot against Maduro, who was named earlier this month by Chavez as his heir apparent, than against the charismatic president who for 14 years has been nearly invincible at the ballot box.

Any constitutional dispute over succession could lead to a messy transition toward a post-Chavez era in the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world.

Maduro has become the face of the government in Chavez's absence, imitating the president's bombastic style and sharp criticism of the United States and its "imperialist" policies.

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Mario Naranjo; Ediitng by Kieran Murray and Todd Eastham)

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Talks stall as fiscal cliff looms

WASHINGTON: Two days of last-gasp talks produced no deal Sunday between US political leaders struggling to averting a fiscal calamity due to hit the American and world economy within hours.

Party leaders in the US Senate groped for a compromise to head-off a punishing package of spending cuts and tax hikes that is due come into force on January 1 and which could roil global markets and plunge the US into recession.

Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell warned that, despite through-the-night talks, negotiators were still a long way from success, as they raced against the ebbing 2012 calendar in search of a compromise.

McConnell told AFP he received no response to a "good faith offer" to Senate Democrats and had spoken twice by telephone with his old friend and sparring partner Vice President Joe Biden in the hope of breaking the stalemate.

Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed that talks were at a standstill, and warned that Americans could ring in the New Year with no deal to avert a budget disaster known as the "fiscal cliff."

"There is still significant distance between the two sides, but negotiations continue," Reid told the Senate, after huddling for nearly two hours with his Democratic caucus on one of the latest December Senate workdays in 50 years.

"There is still time left to reach an agreement, and we intend to continue negotiations," he said, as he ordered the Senate back into session at 11:00am (1600 GMT) Monday, New Year's eve and the last day before the deadline.

Reid said Democrats were unwilling to brook talk of social security cuts.

"This morning, we have been trying to come up with some counter-offer to my friend's proposal," Reid told the Senate. "We have been unable to do that."

The already tense mood on Capitol Hill had soured during Sunday's confusing hours, when some lawmakers tossed out varying versions of what may or may not be in Democratic and Republican offers.

"I'm incredibly disappointed we cannot seem to find common ground. I think we're going over the cliff," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Twitter.

Moderate Democrat Clair McCaskill was also pessimistic.

"This is definitely not a kumbaya moment," she said.

Earlier, President Barack Obama accused Republicans of causing the mess, saying they had refused to move on what he said were genuine offers of compromise from his Democrats.

"Now the pressure's on Congress to produce," Obama said, in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that was recorded on Saturday, a day after he expressed modest optimism that a deal could be reached.

Obama said it had been "very hard" for top Republican leaders to accept that "taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit, as part of an overall deficit reduction package."

But Republicans were irked by Obama's tone.

"I don't know if this is the president saying $250 (thousand) or 'Go to hell'," Graham told reporters, referring to Obama's insistence that taxes rise on households income greater than a quarter million dollars per year.

The Senate's number two Democrat, Dick Durbin, said Republicans want the tax threshold be raised to $550,000 per household and that Democrats might counter with $450,000, considerably higher than the president's $250,000.

But Reid warned: "We're still left with a proposal they've given us that protects the wealthy and not the middle class. I'm not going to agree to that"

If no deal is reached, a package of tax cuts for all Americans that was first passed by then-president George W. Bush will expire on January 1.

All American workers will see their own paycheck hit and the broader economy will suffer from massive automatic spending cuts across the government.

Experts expect the US economy to slide into recession if the standoff is prolonged, in a scenario that could cause turmoil in stock markets and hit prospects for global growth in 2013.

The president won re-election partly on a platform of raising taxes on the rich, but Republicans who run the House of Representatives oppose tax hikes as a point of principle and claim Obama is addicted to runaway spending.

Any deal must pass the Senate, before going to the House, where such is the power of the conservative bloc of the Republican Party, it is unclear whether any solution backed by Obama can win majority support.

If leaders fail to find agreement, Obama has demanded a vote on his fallback plan that would preserve lower tax rates for families on less than $250,000 a year and extend unemployment insurance for two million people.

Republicans admitted such an option could emerge on Monday.

-AFP/ac

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Castrate all rapists, says Zubin Mehta

BEIJING: World famous composer of Indian origin, Zubin Mehta, called for castration of all accused in the Delhi gang-rape case and others found committing the rape in India. He expressed excitement about the protests against the gang-rape of Nirbhaya and expects positive changes to come out of it.

"I am fuming, but I see a very healthy sign of public objection, public demonstration. I hope it will not die down. I hope it will not be short-lived," Mehta told Toi in an exclusive interview.

He said the Indian government should realize what the people really want from it. "It is not only about justice, but the future of India. Police has to take it seriously".

Mehta said the issue is being discussed the world over like the case of Malala, the Pakistani girl, and brought shame to Indians. He also questioned the government's decision to shift the rape victim for medical treatment to Singapore. "Where they trying to remove her from the locality, for her own safety?" he asked.

The least that should be done is to castrate all the four accused in the Delhi gang rape case, he said. "I heard that a girl who reported rape was advised to marry one of the criminals. How can a human being do such a thing?" he asked.

"An important issue that needs to be addressed is how to look after the poor ladies who have been attacked," he said.

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