Guang Ming Industrial Building at Paya Lebar up for collective sale






SINGAPORE: Guang Ming Industrial Building, located at No 65 Upper Paya Lebar Road, has been put up for collective sale.

The freehold industrial 'white site' has a land area of 19,789 square feet.

Its marketing agent Cushman & Wakefield says the site is expected to fetch more than S$58 million.

Among the likely interested parties for the site include small to mid-sized developers and those companies looking for a site to locate their corporate headquarters, adds Cushman and Wakefield.

Developers can build up to a gross floor area of some 70,000 sq ft, including some 20,000 sq ft of retail and commercial space.

This is based on a maximum allowable plot ratio of 3.5.

Cushman & Wakefield's Director of Investment Sales Christina Sim says prime locations like Tai Seng and Paya Lebar will make the building a "hot commodity".

She adds that "the special 'white zoning' of the site will give an added boost to its development potential.

The tender will close on 5 February 2013.

- CNA/de



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Nine more succumb to cold wave in North

NEW DELHI: North India was gripped by bone chilling cold today as temperatures nosedived across the region claiming nine more lives.

Capital Delhi recorded a maximum temperature of 12.7 degrees celsius, 8 less than normal and a minimum of 4.4 degrees celsius, 3 less than the usual.

Kashmir Valley continued to reel under intense cold as temperatures across the state plunged further, even as the fringes of the famous Dal Lake here were frozen for the first time this winter.

The summer capital Srinagar registered the coldest night of the season for the second time this winter as minimum temperature dropped to minus four degrees Celsius.

Cold wave continued unabated in Uttar Pradesh as nine more persons succumbed to the chill in the state, taking the death toll this winter to 116.

Two persons each died in Deoria, Chandauli and Gazipur districts, followed by one each in Bijnor, Jhansi and Barabanki, officials said.

Najibabad was the coldest place in the state where the minimum temperature was recorded at 2.4 degrees, the Met office said, adding that maximum temperatures also remained below normal by 5 to 11 degrees over some parts of western UP.

Night temperatures plummeted in most parts of the region, including Allahabad, Faizabad, Moradabad, Agra, Meerut, Kanpur, Lucknow, Bareilly and Jhansi divisions.

Mercury plummeted in parts of Rajasthan where Mount Abu recorded zero degrees Celsius.

Bikaner also recorded a low of 0.4 degree Celsius. Intense cold continued its grip on most parts of Punjab and Haryana today as a thick blanket of fog played havoc with normal life in the region.

The minimum temperatures hovered between four degrees celsius below normal to four notches above normal in most parts of Punjab and Haryana, the Met office said here.

In the plains of Punjab and Haryana, Narnaul reeled under a low of 0.5 degrees celsius, which was four notches below normal making it the coldest place in the region.

While Karnal braved a low of 4.2 degrees celsius, three notches below normal, the minimum temperature at Chandigarh was 4.7 degrees celsius.

Among other places in the twin agrarian states, Bhiwani settled at a low of 4.8 degrees celsius followed by five degrees celsius at Hisar, 5.2 degrees celsius at Patiala, one notch below normal, 5.6 degrees celsius at Ludhiana and 6 degrees celsius at Ambala.

The night temperatures were up by an average upto two degrees celsius in the region, the Met office said.

However, a thick blanket of fog in the morning at most places in the region affected all modes of travelling, disrupting normal life.

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Flu? Malaria? Disease forecasters look to the sky


NEW YORK (AP) — Only a 10 percent chance of showers today, but a 70 percent chance of flu next month.


That's the kind of forecasting health scientists are trying to move toward, as they increasingly include weather data in their attempts to predict disease outbreaks.


In one recent study, two scientists reported they could predict — more than seven weeks in advance — when flu season was going to peak in New York City. Theirs was just the latest in a growing wave of computer models that factor in rainfall, temperature or other weather conditions to forecast disease.


Health officials are excited by this kind of work and the idea that it could be used to fine-tune vaccination campaigns or other disease prevention efforts.


At the same time, experts note that outbreaks are influenced as much, or more, by human behavior and other factors as by the weather. Some argue weather-based outbreak predictions still have a long way to go. And when government health officials warned in early December that flu season seemed to be off to an early start, they said there was no evidence it was driven by the weather.


This disease-forecasting concept is not new: Scientists have been working on mathematical models to predict outbreaks for decades and have long factored in the weather. They have known, for example, that temperature and rainfall affect the breeding of mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile virus and other dangerous diseases.


Recent improvements in weather-tracking have helped, including satellite technology and more sophisticated computer data processing.


As a result, "in the last five years or so, there's been quite an improvement and acceleration" in weather-focused disease modeling, said Ira Longini, a University of Florida biostatistician who's worked on outbreak prediction projects.


Some models have been labeled successes.


In the United States, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of New Mexico tried to predict outbreaks of hantavirus in the late 1990s. They used rain and snow data and other information to study patterns of plant growth that attract rodents. People catch the disease from the droppings of infected rodents.


"We predicted what would happen later that year," said Gregory Glass, a Johns Hopkins researcher who worked on the project.


More recently, in east Africa, satellites have been used to predict rainfall by measuring sea-surface temperatures and cloud density. That's been used to generate "risk maps" for Rift Valley fever — a virus that spreads from animals to people and in severe cases can cause blindness or death. Researchers have said the system in some cases has given two to six weeks advance warning.


Last year, other researchers using satellite data in east Africa said they found that a small change in average temperature was a warning sign cholera cases would double within four months.


"We are getting very close to developing a viable forecasting system" against cholera that can help health officials in African countries ramp up emergency vaccinations and other efforts, said a statement by one of the authors, Rita Reyburn of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea.


Some diseases are hard to forecast, such as West Nile virus. Last year, the U.S. suffered one of its worst years since the virus arrived in 1999. There were more than 2,600 serious illnesses and nearly 240 deaths.


Officials said the mild winter, early spring and very hot summer helped spur mosquito breeding and the spread of the virus. But the danger wasn't spread uniformly. In Texas, the Dallas area was particularly hard-hit, while other places, including some with similar weather patterns and the same type of mosquitoes, were not as affected.


"Why Dallas, and not areas with similar ecological conditions? We don't really know," said Roger Nasci of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is chief of the CDC branch that tracks insect-borne viruses.


Some think flu lends itself to outbreak forecasting — there's already a predictability to the annual winter flu season. But that's been tricky, too.


Seasonal flu reports come from doctors' offices, but those show the disease when it's already spreading. Some researchers have studied tweets on Twitter and searches on Google, but their work has offered a jump of only a week or two on traditional methods.


In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could forecast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season.


They designed a model based on weather and flu data from past years, 2003-09. In part, their design was based on earlier studies that found flu virus spreads better when the air is dry and turns colder. They made calculations based on humidity readings and on Google Flu Trends, which tracks how many people are searching each day for information on flu-related topics (often because they're beginning to feel ill).


Using that model, they hope to try real-time predictions as early as next year, said Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University, who led the work.


"It's certainly exciting," said Lyn Finelli, the CDC's flu surveillance chief. She said the CDC supports Shaman's work, but agency officials are eager to see follow-up studies showing the model can predict flu trends in places different from New York, like Miami.


Despite the optimism by some, Dr. Edward Ryan, a Harvard University professor of immunology and infectious diseases, is cautious about weather-based prediction models. "I'm not sure any of them are ready for prime time," he said.


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Senate Swears in a Historic 20 Female Senators












Today the Senate will make history, swearing in a record-breaking 20 female senators – 4 Republicans and 16 Democrats – in office.


As the 113th Congress is sworn in today on Capitol Hill, ABC "World News" anchor Diane Sawyer has an exclusive joint interview with the historic class of female Senators.


Diane Sawyer's complete interview will air on World News this evening.


"I can't tell you the joy that I feel in my heart to look at these 20 gifted and talented women from two different parties, different zip codes to fill this room," Sen. Barbara Mikulksi, D-Md., said while surrounded by the group of women senators. "In all of American history only 16 women had served. Now there are 20 of us."


Senator-elect Deb Fischer, R-Neb., becomes today the first women to be elected as a senator in Nebraska.


"It was an historic election," Fischer said, "But what was really fun about it were the number of mothers and fathers who brought their daughters up to me during the campaign and said, "Can we get a picture? Can we get a picture?' Because people realize it and -- things do change, things do change."


The women senators all agree that women will be getting things done in this new Congress, a sign of optimism felt for the new Congress, after the bruising battles of the 112th Congress.




"We're in force and we're in leadership positions, but it's not just the position that we hold. I can tell you this is a can-do crowd," Mikulski said of both Democrats and Republican senators in the room. "We are today ready to be a force in American politics."


And while the number of women in the Senate today makes historic, many of the women agreed that they want to keep fighting to boost those numbers. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said that women are still "underrepresented" in the Senate.


"I think that until we get to 50, we still have to fight because it's still a problem," Boxer said. "I think this class as you look around, Republicans and Democrats... I think that because of this new class and the caliber of the people coming and the quality of the people coming, I think that hopefully in my lifetime -- and I really do hope and pray this is the case -- we will see 50 percent. "


No Sorority Here, Even With the Will to Work Together


The cooperation does not make them a "sorority," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says. There are real differences in ideology and personality and they don't want their gender to define them as senators.


But the women also admit that they believe having more women in the room would help in fierce negotiations, compromise, and legislating on Capitol Hill, traits they say do not come as naturally to their male colleagues in the Senate. That sentiment enjoys bipartisan support among the women of the Senate.


"What I find is with all due deference to our male colleagues, that women's styles tend to be more collaborative," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said.


Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said by nature women are "less confrontational." Sen-elect Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, says that women are "problem solvers."


Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., says that women have a camaraderie which helps in relationships that are key to negotiations on Capitol Hill, something she says comes natural to women more than men.


"I think there's just a lot of collaboration between the women senators and... advice and really standing up for each other that you don't always see with the men," she said.






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Air raid on petrol station in Damascus suburb kills 30: activists


AMMAN (Reuters) - At least 30 civilians were killed on Wednesday when Syrian warplanes bombed a petrol station in a rebellious suburb on the eastern edge of Damascus, two opposition campaigners on the scene said.


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


Another activist, Abu Fouad, said warplanes had bombarded the area as a consignment of fuel arrived and crowds packed the station.


Video footage taken by activists, which could not be independently verified, showed a body of a man a helmet on a motorcycle amid flames that had engulfed the site, apparently hit while in a line of vehicles waiting for petrol. A man was also shown carrying a dismembered body.


Muleiha is one of a series of Sunni Muslim suburbs ringing the capital that have been at the forefront of the 21 month revolt against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to the Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect.


Government forces control the center of Damascus and have been pounding the suburbs from the air.


(Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Amman newsroom; Editing by Peter Graff)



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Gold rallies on fiscal deal






SINGAPORE: Gold prices receive a boost as US lawmakers finally approved a bill to address the fiscal cliff.

The precious metal rose as much as US$29 an ounce from last week's close of US$1,655.70 a troy ounce on December 28.

The deal struck in the US Congress has helped arrest the threat of the world's largest economy falling into a deep recession.

But some analysts said it is just a knee-jerk reaction and the rally may not be sustainable.

Gold is often seen as a safe haven for investors and is commonly used as a hedge against inflation and a store of wealth especially in times of uncertainty.

Despite a bullish outlook on gold in 2012, the precious metal only managed a modest gain of seven per cent from the start of the year.

It also underperformed against equities which saw Asian stock markets gaining about 20 per cent. For instance the Hang Seng Index up 22.9 per cent , STI gained 20.6 per cent, Nikkei's up 23 per cent in 2012.

The latest move by the US Congress to pass a bill to end the fiscal cliff crisis has lifted sentiment on gold investing.

Some investors expect gold prices to propel higher since the deal may lead to a weakening of the US dollar and this means gold prices will rise as investors switch into the precious metal.

Yet, most experts are not too sanguine of its prospects and expect the impact on gold prices to be muted at best.

"We have the debt ceiling issue which we address somewhere in end February, early March and then we expect a gradual recovery in the US economy in the second half of this year," said Roy Wellington Teo, a foreign exchange and precious metals strategist at ABN Amro (Asia).

He added: "Therefore, we think a stronger US dollar towards the second half of this year could potentially lead to gold prices trend lower towards US$1,500 an ounce end of this year."

Swiss lender UBS expect gold prices to make a steady climb later this year when investors start to worry about inflation when economic growth returns.

During inflation, the value of key currencies like the US dollar and Japanese yen will weaken and this will prompt investors to switch into gold and boost prices.

US said it expects the precious metal to reach USD$1,950 a troy ounce by the first half of this year and is likely to show better performance in 2013.

Dominic Schnider, head of NTAC Research at UBS, said: "Overall the gold price will definitely lag equities but it is still going to be a good asset in your portfolio if you consider we still have a lot of risk factors out there including monetary debasement which is actually a big topic especially with the recent development in Japan."

Looking ahead, experts said gold prices will get a further boost if the US Federal Reserve extends its stimulus programme.

This is expected to inject more liquidity into the financial system.

Avtar Sandu, a business development senior manager at Phillip Futures, said: "We have low interest rate environment, we have all the QEs and we have all the central banks that are buying gold. All these will slowly drive the prices of gold forward."

Yet, some analysts warned that it may not be all glitter for gold this year.

They said that inflation may ease in 2013 and concerns over inflation may be misplaced.

- CNA/fa



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Trinamool suspends leaders over dance row

KOLKATA: Ruling Trinamool Congress on Wednesday suspended party leaders and workers after they were seen showering money at dancing girls at an event to celebrate the Mamata Banerjee-led party's foundation day ceremony.

The decision came following severe criticism from political parties, the women's commission and intellectuals, after the partymen — including zila parishad member Meer Taheer Ali — were caught on camera showering money on skimpily-dressed women dancers who were hired for the event in South 24-Parganas' Bhangore Tuesday evening.

Party MP Derek O'Brien, who condemned the incident on Wednesday morning and assured that action would be taken within 48 hours, tweeted Tuesday afternoon that the accused men have been suspended from the party.

O'Brien did not rule out expulsion of the suspended cadres from the party.

Earlier, the "erotic dance" controversy left Banerjee's Trinamool Congress embarrassed after the opposition CPM, the Congress and the National Commission for Women took a dig at the party leadership.

National Commission for Women chairperson Mamta Sharma dubbed the incident as "shameful".

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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."


___


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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Syria starts 2013 with aerial strikes and clashes


BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrians woke on New Year's Day to countrywide aerial bombardment, while President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels fighting to topple him clashed on the outskirts of the capital.


Residents of Damascus entered the new year to the sound of artillery hitting southern and eastern districts that form a rebel-held crescent on the outskirts of the capital, the center of which is still firmly under government control.


In the center, soldiers manning checkpoints fired celebratory gunfire at midnight, causing alarm in a city where streets were largely deserted.


"How can they celebrate? There is no 'Happy New Year'," Moaz al-Shami, an opposition activists who lives in the capital's central Mezzeh district, said over Skype, his voice trembling with anger.


He said rebel fighters attacked one checkpoint in the district of Berzeh early on Tuesday. Opposition groups said mortar bombs hit the southwest suburb of Daraya, where the army launched a military offensive on Monday to retake the battered district.


Assad's air force pounded Damascus's eastern suburbs, as well as rebel-held areas in the second city Aleppo, and several rural towns and villages, opposition activists said.


An estimated 45,000 people have been killed in the revolt, 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, who asked to remain anonymous, said shells had landed on the Old City early on Tuesday.


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


"The Old City is under siege. There is shelling from all sides," he said.


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. The group's reports cannot be verified.


BOMBARDMENT


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


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


Assad's forces have lately relied more on aerial and artillery bombardment, rather than infantry. Residential areas where rebels base themselves have been targeted, killing civilians unable to flee. Schools and queues of people buying bread have been hit.


Rebels have taken swathes of the north and the east but have struggled to hold cities, complaining that they are defenseless against Assad's Soviet-built air force.


A year ago, many diplomats and analysts predicted Assad would leave power in 2012. But he has proved resilient and none of his inner circle have defected. He still largely retains control of his armed forces.


Diplomatic efforts to end the war have faltered, with the rebels refusing to negotiate unless Assad leaves power and him pledging to fight until death.


Most Western and Arab states have called for him to leave power. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.


In the final 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 Alison Williams)



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