Time's Up: Sides Closing In on 'Fiscal Cliff' Deal

President Obama said an 11th-hour agreement to avert year-end tax hikes on 98 percent of Americans is "within sight" but not yet complete with just hours to go before the nation reaches the so-called fiscal cliff.

"There are still issues left to resolve but we're hopeful Congress can get it done," Obama said at a midday White House news conference. "But it's not done."

Congressional and White House negotiators have forged the contours of an agreement that would extend current tax rates for households making $450,000 or less; raise the estate tax from 35 to 40 percent for estates larger than $5 million; and prevent the Alternative Minimum Tax from hammering millions of middle-class workers, sources said.

The deal would also extend for one year unemployment insurance benefits set to expire Tuesday, and avert a steep cut to Medicare payments for doctors.

"There is an agreement to fix the tax problem; that is finalized," an aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told ABC News.

Both sides remained at odds over what to do about the other significant piece of the "fiscal cliff" -- the more than $1 trillion of automatic cuts to defense and domestic programs set to begin tomorrow.

The White House has proposed a three-month delay of the cuts to allow more time to hash out details for deficit reduction, while many Senate Democrats want a flat one-year delay. Republicans insist that some spending cuts should be implemented now as part of any deal.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

"In order to get the sequester moved, you're going to have to have real, concrete spending cuts," Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said. "[Without that], I don't know how it passes the House."

Vice President Joe Biden and McConnell, R-Ky., have been locked in behind-the-scenes negotiations for much of the day, sources said, following several "good" conversations that stretched late into Sunday night.

If a deal is reached between Biden and McConnell, members in both chambers would still need to review it and vote on it later today. Passage is far from guaranteed.

"This is one Democrat that doesn't agree with that at all," Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin said of the tentative deal. "No deal is better than a bad deal, and this looks like a very bad deal the way this is shaping up."

"I don't see how you get something voted on today," Rogers said. "Even if they get a handshake deal today, you have to put the whole thing together and that's probably not going to happen before midnight. So it would make sense to roll into tomorrow to do that."

Failure of Congress to act on a tax measure by Tuesday morning would trigger income tax hikes on all Americans. The average family would pay an extra $3,446 in 2013 under the higher rates, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Regardless of the "cliff," virtually all workers are due to see less in their paychecks starting in January when the temporary 2 percent payroll tax cut will expire.

More than $1 trillion in automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs will also begin to take effect later this week unless Congress delays or replaces them.

"It is absolutely inexcusable that all of us find ourselves in this place at this time," Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Sunday night on the Senate floor.

"Something has gone terribly wrong when the biggest threat to our American economy is our American Congress," he said, echoing a frustration shared by many Americans.

Both sides say the cost of failure is high.

"If we are not able to reach an agreement, it will be dire," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "Probably at least another million jobs lost, an unemployment rate over 9 percent, and putting us back into recession."

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Body of India rape victim cremated in New Delhi

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The body of a woman, whose gang rape provoked protests and rare national debate about violence against women in India, arrived back in New Delhi on Sunday and was cremated at a private ceremony.

Scuffles broke out in central Delhi between police and protesters who say the government is doing too little to protect women. But the 2,000-strong rally was confined to a single area, unlike last week when protests raged up throughout the capital.

Riot police manned barricades along streets leading to India Gate war memorial - a focal point for demonstrators - and, at another gathering point - the centuries-old Jantar Mantar - protesters held banners reading "We want justice!" and "Capital punishment".

Most sex crimes in India go unreported, many offenders go unpunished, and the wheels of justice turn slowly, according to social activists, who say that successive governments have done little to ensure the safety of women.

The unidentified 23-year-old victim of the December 16 gang rape died of her injuries on Saturday, prompting promises of action from a government that has struggled to respond to public outrage.

The medical student had suffered brain injuries and massive internal injuries in the attack and died in hospital in Singapore where she had been taken for treatment.

She and a male friend had been returning home from the cinema, media reports say, when six men on a bus beat them with metal rods and repeatedly raped the woman. The friend survived.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, police figures show. Reported rape cases rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011, according to government data.

Six suspects were charged with murder after her death and face the death penalty if convicted.

In Kolkata, one of India's four biggest cities, police said a man reported that his mother had been gang-raped and killed by a group of six men in a small town near the city on Saturday.

She was killed on her way home with her husband, a senior official said, and the attackers had thrown acid at the husband, raped and killed her, and dumped her body in a roadside pond.

Police declined to give any further details. One officer told Reuters no criminal investigation had yet been launched.

"MISOGYNY"

The leader of India's ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, was seen arriving at the airport when the plane carrying the woman's body from Singapore landed and Prime Minister Mannmohan Singh's convoy was also there.

A Reuters correspondent saw family members who had been with her in Singapore take her body from the airport to their Delhi home in an ambulance with a police escort.

Her body was then taken to a crematorium and cremated. Media were kept away but a Reuters witness saw the woman's family, New Delhi's chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, and the junior home minister, R P N Singh, coming out of the crematorium.

The outcry over the attack caught the government off guard. It took a week for the prime minister to make a statement, infuriating many protesters. Last weekend they fought pitched battles with police.

Issues such as rape, dowry-related deaths and female infanticide rarely enter mainstream political discourse.

Analysts say the death of the woman dubbed "Amanat", an Urdu word meaning "treasure", by some Indian media could change that, though it is too early to say whether the protesters can sustain their momentum through to national elections due in 2014.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon added his voice to those demanding change, calling for "further steps and reforms to deter such crimes and bring perpetrators to justice".

Commentators and sociologists say the incident earlier this month has tapped into a deep well of frustration many Indians feel over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social issues.

Newspapers raised doubts about the commitment of both male politicians and the police to protecting women.

"Would the Indian political system and class have been so indifferent to the problem of sexual violence if half or even one-third of all legislators were women?" the Hindu newspaper asked.

The Indian Express said it was more complicated than realizing that the police force was understaffed and underpaid.

"It is geared towards dominating citizens rather than working for them, not to mention being open to influential interests," the newspaper said. "It reflects the misogyny around us, rather than actively fighting for the rights of citizens who happen to be female."

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin and Diksha Madhokin New Delhi and Sujoy Dhar in Kolkata; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Nobel medicine laureate Levi-Montalcini dies aged 103

ROME: Nobel medicine laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini, a neurologist and developmental biologist, died on Sunday at her home in Rome aged 103.

She was the oldest living Nobel laureate at the time of her death.

Levi-Montalcini shared the prize with colleague Stanley Cohen in 1986 for their ground-breaking discovery of growth factors.

The Nobel committee cited the pair for advancing "our knowledge from a stage when... growth factors were unknown, to a situation today when the role of growth factors in cell proliferation, organ differentiation, and tumour transformation is generally recognised."

Their work has helped understanding of such disorders as cancer, birth defects and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Enjoying great affection and respect in Italy, Levi-Montalcini intervened to defend the teaching of evolution in schools when, in 2004, the then education minister, Letizia Moratti, wanted to remove it from the curriculum.

In 2001, Italy's then president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi named Levi-Montalcini a senator for life, an honour bestowed on former presidents and prominent figures in social, scientific, artistic or literary fields.

In this role, she was the grand old lady of the Senate, taking pains to turn up for crucial votes in support of the Italian centre-left, even late in life when she was deaf and nearly blind.

In 2007 she cut short a trip to Dubai to help then prime minister Romano Prodi survive a confidence vote.

Levi-Montalcini had vowed to continue exercising her "right and duty" to vote alongside elected senators despite her age and sniping from elements of the right.

The indefatigable scientist continued to work daily at her laboratory in Rome well into her declining years.

She was the first woman president of the Italian Encyclopaedia and a member of several prestigious scientific societies including the Italian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and London's Royal Society.

Born into a wealthy Jewish intellectual family in northern Turin in 1909, Montalcini was the daughter of an engineer and an artist whom she described in her Nobel autobiography as "an exquisite human being."

Her twin sister Paola died in 2000, and her brother Gino in 1974. The oldest, Anna,

Overcoming her father's resistance to the idea of a professional career for a woman, Levi-Montalcini entered medical school in Turin aged 20.

Levi-Montalcini shunned marriage and motherhood to devote herself to a medical career.

But in 1936, the same year she earned a summa cum laude degree in medicine and surgery, Mussolini decreed racial laws that barred Jews from pursuing academic and professional careers.

So instead of embarking on a specialisation in neurology and psychiatry, she set up a small laboratory in her bedroom, performing experiments on chick embryos.

The Allied bombing of Turin in 1941 forced the family to flee to the Piedmont countryside, where Levi-Montalcini rebuilt the lab. Two years later, with the German invasion, the family fled to Florence, where they lived underground until the end of the war.

She managed to work as a medical doctor for Allied forces, treating war refugees afflicted by deadly epidemics of infectious diseases such as typhus.

Finally, when the war in Italy ended in May 1945, Levi-Montalcini was able to resume her career.

Her work on chick embryos, published in Switzerland and Belgium, led to an invitation to a research position at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1947.

Although she initially planned to stay for a brief stint, she wound up staying 30 years. It was there that she and Cohen studied mouse tumours implanted in chick embryos.

She set up the interdisciplinary European Brain Research Institute in Rome in 2002.

She established the Levi-Montalcini Foundation to help African women, and as Food and Agriculture Organisation ambassador for many years and in many other public forums she advocated the alleviation of world hunger.

- AFP/jc

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Don’t let Nirbhaya’s fire die

NEW DELHI: Her funeral was conducted in near-secrecy and amid tight security, but all of India mourned as the mortal remains of 23-year-old Nirbhaya were cremated at Dwarka early on Sunday morning. The bubbly girl who was the pride and joy of her family could not live to fulfill her fond dreams. But as the protesters who congregated at Jan tar Mantar a few hours later clearly demonstrated, the memory of her courage will never die.

The aircraft bearing her body reached Palam technical area of IGI airport from Singapore at 3.30am. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi arrived immediately. They spent around 30 minutes at the airport consoling the girl's parents. The body reached the family's residence at around 4:30am in an ambulance amid heavy security and a convoy of police vans.

After prayers by relatives, Nirbhaya's body was taken to the Dwarka crematorium at 6:45am in dense fog. The charnel ground had no light and preparations for her funeral were made under torch and flashlights. The girl's emotionally drained mother collapsed and was rushed to hospital, where doctors later described her condition as stable. Nirbhaya's father lit the pyre with chief minister Sheila Dikshit, Union minister RPN Singh and Delhi BJP chief Vijender Gupta among those in attendance.

The funeral preparations were made in complete secrecy with everyone - from the police, to family members and politicians - told by the home affairs ministry about fears of crowd trouble at the crematorium if information about it leaked. Nevertheless, as the day wore on and people gathered at various places in the capital in protest, youth groups of ABVP, NSUI and AISA clashed with the police at Jantar Mantar.

Deliberations on who would receive the body took place at a Congress core group meeting at the PM's residence late on Saturday evening, during which Sonia was learnt to have expressed her wish to receive the body and meet the grief-stricken family.

The meeting - also attended by home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and RPN Singh - agreed on Sonia's decision and also advised the PM to be there at the airport. Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit and West Delhi MP Mahabal Mishra, too, were informed about the plan.

Delhi Police was directed to make necessary arrangements and deploy personnel along the entire route from Palam technical area to Mahavir Enclave, where Nirbhaya lived. The lanes to her house were fortified with more than 200 policemen and BSF jawans as early as Saturday night.

A neighbour of the 23-year-old said police deployment in the area had begun at 8pm on Saturday when all the lanes were barricaded.

When the body arrived at the house, people were seen coming in from everywhere, politicians included. Among the first to reach were Vijender Gupta and Mahabal Mishra. Not many were allowed to meet the family members.

Soon the body was taken out and people walked with it for a short distance before it was transferred to an ambulance and taken to Dwarka crematorium. More than 200 people from the neighbourhood where the girl lived joined the family members in mourning and moved in a convoy of vans and cars.

Many people, on hearing about the funeral, even walked to the crematorium. The last rites were performed within an hour of the body reaching the crematorium. Nirbhaya's father looked completely distraught. Nirbhaya's three uncles and her younger brothers were present.

RPN Singh and Dikshit condoled with the family. After the funeral, Nirbhaya's family members were taken to their home in cars arranged by Mahabal Mishra.

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

___

Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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President Suggests Small 'Cliff' Deal Likely

With less than two days remaining for Congress to reach a budget agreement that would avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff,” President Obama today suggested that a small deal remains the best hope to avoid the perilous package of spending cuts and tax increases.

In an interview aired this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press” the president said if Republicans agreed to raising taxes on top income earners it should be enough to avoid the triggers that would execute the $607 billion measure. Economists agree that going over the cliff would likely put the country back in recession.

“If we have raised some revenue by the wealthy paying a little bit more, that would be sufficient to turn off what’s called the sequester, these automatic spending cuts, and that also would have a better outcome for our economy long-term,” he said.

Saying the “pressure is on Congress to produce,” the president did not specify what income level his party would deem acceptable as the cutoff for those who would see their tax rates remain at current levels. The president has called for expiration of the “Bush-era” tax cuts to affect household earnings over $250,000 since the campaign, but has reportedly floated a $400,000 figure in past negotiations. Speaker John Boehner once offered a $1 million cut-off in his failed “Plan B” proposal, which failed to garner enough support among the House Republicans.

“It’s been very hard for Speaker Boehner and Republican Leader McConnell  to accept the fact that taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit as part of an overall deficit reduction package,” the president said.

Domestic programs would lose $55 billion in funding should sequestration pass, including $2 billion to Medicare and unemployment benefits. The Pentagon would take a $55 billion loss as well, or 9 percent of their budget.

Repeating remarks he made Friday after a meeting with congressional leaders, Obama said that should negotiations fail he has asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to introduce a stripped- down proposal to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote – if it isn’t blocked.

“If all else fails, if Republicans do in fact decide to block so that taxes on the middle class do in fact go up on January 1, then we’ll come back with a new Congress on January 4, and the first bill that will be introduced on the floor will be to cut taxes on middle-class families,” he said of the worst case scenario. “I don’t think the average person is going to say, ‘Gosh, you know, that’s a really partisan agenda.’”

The interview was taped Saturday while Reid and his GOP counterpart Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky scrambled to their offices for a solution behind closed doors. Press staking out Capitol Hill reported little public activity from the leaders or their surrogates. If negotiations are successful, the lawmakers could introduce a bill for vote this afternoon.

Republican leaders bit back at the president’s remarks. In a written statement Speaker Boehner said casting blame was “ironic, as a recurring theme of our negotiations was his unwillingness to agree to anything that would require him to stand up to his own party. ”

“In an effort to get the president to agree to cut spending – which is the problem – I put revenues on the table last year, and I put them on the table again last month,” he wrote. “Republicans made every effort to reach the ‘balanced’ deficit agreement that the president promised the American people, while the president has continued to insist on a package skewed dramatically in favor of higher taxes that would destroy jobs.”

Senator McConnell’s office issued this response to the NBC appearance:

“While the President was taping those discordant remarks yesterday, Sen. McConnell was in the office working to bring Republicans and Democrats together on a solution. Discussions continue today.”

Regardless of outcome, talk of a comprehensive budget deal is gone and any bill would likely set up a series of smaller partisan roadblocks in the weeks and months to come. For example, if any hypothetical legislation managed to dodge tax increases for the middle class it may still not address the looming debt ceiling, which Treasury can avoid using accounting tricks for approximately two months.

A small deal may also not address the estate tax, another central point of the brinkmanship. Currently standing at 35 percent, Republicans want to leave that rate as-is after exempting the first $5 million in estate value. Meanwhile Democrats have called for a 45 percent tax after a $3.5 million exemption. Should negotiations fail, it would climb to 55 percent after a $1 million exemption after the New Year.

ABC’s Sunlen Miller and the Associated Press contributed to this report, which has been updated.

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Syria opposition leader rejects Moscow invitation

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's opposition leader has rejected an invitation from Russia for peace talks, dealing another blow to international hopes that diplomacy can be resurrected to end a 21-month civil war.

Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's main international protector, said on Friday it had sent an invitation for a visit to Moaz Alkhatib, whose six-week-old National Coalition opposition group has been recognized by most Western and Arab states as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people.

But in an interview on Al Jazeera television, Alkhatib said he had already ruled out such a trip and wanted an apology from Moscow for its support for Assad.

"We have clearly said we will not go to Moscow. We could meet in an Arab country if there was a clear agenda," he said.

"Now we also want an apology from (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei) Lavrov because all this time he said that the people will decide their destiny, without foreign intervention. Russia is intervening and meanwhile all these massacres of the Syrian people have happened, treated as if they were a picnic."

"If we don't represent the Syrian people, why do they invite us?" Alkhatib said. "And if we do represent the Syrian people why doesn't Russia respond and issue a clear condemnation of the barbarity of the regime and make a clear call for Assad to step down? This is the basic condition for any negotiations."

With the rebels advancing steadily over the second half of 2012, diplomats have been searching for months for signs that Moscow's willingness to protect Assad is faltering.

So far Russia has stuck to its position that rebels must negotiate with Assad's government, which has ruled since his father seized power in a coup 42 years ago.

"I think a realistic and detailed assessment of the situation inside Syria will prompt reasonable opposition members to seek ways to start a political dialogue," Lavrov said on Friday.

That was immediately dismissed by the opposition: "The coalition is ready for political talks with anyone ... but it will not negotiate with the Assad regime," spokesman Walid al-Bunni told Reuters. "Everything can happen after the Assad regime and all its foundations have gone. After that we can sit down with all Syrians to set out the future."

BRAHIMI TO MOSCOW

Russia says it is behind the efforts of U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, fresh from a five-day trip to Damascus where he met Assad. Brahimi, due in Moscow for talks on Saturday, is touting a months-old peace plan for a transitional government.

That U.N. plan was long seen as a dead letter, foundering from the outset over the question of whether the transitional body would include Assad or his allies. Brahimi's predecessor, Kofi Annan, quit in frustration shortly after negotiating it.

But with rebels having seized control of large sections of the country in recent months, Russia and the United States have been working with Brahimi to resurrect the plan as the only internationally recognized diplomatic negotiating track.

Russia's Middle East envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who announced the invitation to Alkhatib, said further talks were scheduled between the "three B's" - himself, Brahimi and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns.

Speaking in Damascus on Thursday, Brahimi called for a transitional government with "all the powers of the state", a phrase interpreted by the opposition as potentially signaling tolerance of Assad remaining in some ceremonial role.

But such a plan is anathema to the surging rebels, who now believe they can drive Assad out with a military victory, despite long being outgunned by his forces.

"We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told reporters at his headquarters there.

Oqaidi said the rebels want Assad and his allies tried in Syria for crimes. Assad himself says he will stay on and fight to the death if necessary.

In the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, demonstrators held up cartoons showing Brahimi speaking to a news conference with toilet bowls in front of him, in place of microphones. Banners denounced the U.N. envoy with obscenities in English.

DIPLOMATS IMPOTENT

Diplomacy has largely been irrelevant to the conflict so far, with Western states ruling out military intervention like the NATO bombing that helped topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last year, and Russia and China blocking U.N. action against Assad.

Meanwhile, the fighting has grown fiercer and more sectarian, with rebels mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority battling Assad's government and allied militia dominated by his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Still, Western diplomats have repeatedly touted signs of a change in policy from Russia, which they hope could prove decisive, much as Moscow's withdrawal of support for Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic heralded his downfall a decade ago.

Bogdanov said earlier this month that Assad's forces were losing ground and rebels might win the war, but Russia has since rowed back, with Lavrov last week reiterating Moscow's position that neither side could win through force.

Still, some Moscow-based analysts see the Kremlin coming to accept it must adapt to the possibility of rebel victory.

"As the situation changes on the battlefield, more incentives emerge for seeking a way to stop the military action and move to a phase of political regulation," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Meanwhile, on the ground the bloodshed that has killed some 44,000 people continues unabated. According to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, 150 people were killed on Thursday, a typical toll as fighting has escalated in recent months.

Government war planes bombarded the town of Assal al-Ward in the Qalamoun district of Damascus province for the first time, killing one person and wounding dozens, the observatory said.

In Aleppo, Syria's northern commercial hub, clashes took place between rebel fighters and army forces around an air force intelligence building in the Zahra quarter, a neighborhood that has been surrounded by rebels for weeks.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Dominic Evans in Beirut and Steve Gutterman and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Italy's Monti to lead centrist coalition in February polls

ROME: Italy's caretaker Prime Minister Mario Monti said Friday that he will contest February elections at the head of a centrist coalition, driving a wedge between centre-left and centre-right parties.

"I agree to assume the role of head of the coalition, and I will commit myself to guaranteeing the success of this operation," Monti said after meeting for four hours with representatives of centrist groups and civic organisations.

Monti, 69, announced a week ago that he would step down after 13 months at the head of an unelected team of technocrats that was appointed to steer Italy out of a financial crisis that could have had dire consequences for the entire 17-nation eurozone.

Technically, as an Italian senator for life, the former European commissioner cannot himself run for office, but is in a position to be renamed prime minister if a party or coalition he supports wins the vote on February 24-25.

Monti is seen as a recourse to prevent scandal-tainted former premier Silvio Berlusconi from returning to power and undoing hard-won reforms.

The "Monti Agenda" proposes to cut public funds for political parties and parliamentary groups, and also includes measures to make more room for women and environmental issues.

Monti could bar the route for Berlusconi, who is running for the premiership for the sixth time in 18 years, but who is now isolated on the right side of the political spectrum with support from anti-tax and anti-euro factions.

Analysts had expected Pier Luigi Bersani of the centre-left Democratic Party to be named prime minister, and to then appoint Monti as a "super economy minister".

Berlusconi, who is appealing an October conviction for tax fraud and is currently on trial for having sex with an underage prostitute, has made proposals including the abolition of a new property tax that Monti has called "very dangerous and illusory".

A Monti-backed reform coalition is likely to steal votes from both Bersani and Berlusconi, who has virulently lambasted Monti's pro-Europe austerity policies.

Monti has been endorsed by European leaders, the markets and the Roman Catholic Church.

But while Monti's bold reforms have received wide praise from investors and rescued Italy from the brink of bankruptcy, they are increasingly unpopular among Italians who have been on the receiving end.

Monti's approval rating has plunged from more than 60 percent as he took office to around 30 percent in recent weeks.

And he has come under fire for appearing to make no effort to reach out to voters.

The economy is still stuck in a recession, unemployment is at record highs and consumption has fallen this year at its fastest rate since World War II.

Monti was installed by parliament at the head of an unelected, technocratic government when Berlusconi was forced to step down last year in a storm of sex scandals, market panic and infighting within his own party.

With his professorial demeanour, sober lifestyle and dry English wit, Monti could not have been more different from the larger-than-life Berlusconi.

-AFP/ac

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Sharad Pawar's word of advice to President Pranab Mukherjee's son

MUMBAI: Union agriculture minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar has a "word of advice" for former cabinet colleague and President Pranab Mukherjee's son, Jangipur Congress MP Abhijeet, as well as other politicians who seem to have taken umbrage at the spontaneous protests against crime against women.

Without naming Abhijeet, Pawar said, "When situation becomes intolerable, citizens come on road to register their protest. The public outrage is natural." The statement to this effect was made by Pawar at the inauguration of the party's renovated office here on Friday, a day after Abhijit made a controversial remark on the Delhi gangrape protest, calling the agitators "pretty pretty women, highly dented and painted".

The NCP patriarch's statement assumes significance in the backdrop of controversial remarks made made by Congress MP Abhijeet.

The Congress MP on Thursday had created a storm when he questioned the intent of the protestors in Delhi and called them publicity seeking 'dented and painted women'. After a country wide outburst the President's son had to finally apologise as his own family members took offence to remark made against the women fraternity. While the Congress wanted people to 'forgive' and 'forget' it was clear that the UPA's own ally was not willing to forgive Abhijeet for his remark.

The NCP chief seems to be unhappy with the overall situation of the nation. "The present unrest in the country is worrisome," said Pawar. who is a senior ally of the ruling UPA government in the Centre.

Taking cognizance of the public outrage in Delhi, Pawar advised his partymen, especially ministers in the DF government in the state, to take "aggressive steps" to ensure women's safety and also to deal with other issues related to them. He also reminded his party rank and file members that they had a social responsibilities and that politics was not restricted to mere votes.

Supporting state home minister R R Patil's recommendation to the Centre to implement strict punishment for those involved in crimes against women, Pawar said, "The Union government should take ahead such proposals to curb assault on women." The Delhi rape victim will recover, but we are worried about the girl's future."

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

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Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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