Eleven dead in Damascus gas station blast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DRAMATIC ADVANCES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NIGHTLY BOMBARDMENTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Davos 2013 to focus on health issues

GENEVA: The World Economic Forum will focus on global health issues when it holds its annual winter meeting in Davos, Switzerland from January 23-27, Forum organisers said on Thursday.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and World Bank president Jim Yong Kim are to be joined by several health ministers and more than 25 heads of healthcare companies under the theme of "Resilient Dynamism," a Forum statement said.

"The health community will focus on the future of sustainable national health systems, workplace wellness and individual health," it added.

According to the Forum's organisers, global consideration of health-care issues often is held back by short-term thinking and entrenched positions, and they urged countries to "break from the status quo to embark on courageous transformation to sustainably deliver access to high-quality health services."

The Forum plans to launch a report on sustainable health systems and health in the workplace as the meeting gets under way.

The report is based on a study of more than two million workers in 125 countries.

- AFP/jc

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Rapes occur in India, not Bharat: RSS supremo Bhagwat

SILCHAR: RSS supremo Mohanrao Bhagwat criticized 'western' lifestyle of people in urban areas and said, without empirical evidence to back such a claim, that rape is prevalent mainly in cities where Indians are deeply influenced by western values and not by rural India. Various women's NGOs and even police records suggest rapes in rural areas largely go unreported.

Addressing a citizens' meet here on Tuesday during his four-day visit to Silchar, Bhagwat said, "Such crimes hardly take place in 'Bharat', but they occur frequently in 'India'.

"You go to villages and forests of the country and there will be no such incidents of gang-rape or sex crimes. They are prevalent in some urban belts. Besides new legislations, Indian ethos and attitude towards women should be revisited in the context of ancient Indian values," Bhagwat said.

The RSS, he said, was for stringent laws against rape and would welcome new legislation on sex crimes and favour capital punishment for those convicted of rape.

Saying that the RSS backed the chorus across the country demanding death penalty for those responsible for the December 16 gang rape of 23-year-old Nirbhaya, who died on December 29, Bhagwat said this needed to be backed by stringent laws. He also slammed the government for applying force against the protesters at Delhi's Vijay Chowk.

On Assam, Bhagwat said illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh are now in a position to dictate the politics of the state. He said such elements have been sneaking in through a porous international border, threatening the security and integrity of India. But, the RSS chief said, Assam would never become another Kashmir.

"We've been passing through a time when the country's border is not secure, and people are suffering from insecurity and price rise. There's seems no rescue from such situation," Bhagwat said.

He said Hindus taking shelter in India from Bangladesh and Pakistan can't be called infiltrators. "Hindus should always be treated on humanitarian ground. They can't become 'doubtful' voters. Many Hindus from Pakistan who took shelter in India were granted citizenship. This should be done in case of Hindus who came to India from neighbouring Bangladesh as well," the RSS leader said.

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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

___

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

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

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Christie Calls Boehner's Sandy Decision 'Disgusting'

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said today that it was "disgusting" that the House adjourned without voting on a $60 billion relief package for the victims of superstorm Sandy and put the blame squarely on a fellow Republican -- House Speaker John Boehner.

Christie, who is considered a possible Republican presidential candidate four years from now, said there was "only one group to blame, the Republican Party and Speaker Boehner."

The blunt talking New Jersey governor joined a chorus of Republicans from New York and New Jersey fuming over his decision to pull the bill at the last minute.

Christie in an angry news conference decried the "selfishness and duplicity," the "palace intrigue," "the callous indifference to the people of our state."

"Unfortunately people are putting politics ahead of their responsibilities... You do the right thing. Enough with all the politics," he said.

Christie said that when it comes to natural disasters, "We respond as Americans, at least we did until last night... it was disgusting to watch."

"In our hour of desperate need, we've been left waiting for help six times longer than the victims of Katrina with no end in sight," said Christie. "Sixty-six days and counting, shame on you. Shame on Congress."

The governor said his four calls to Boehner Tuesday night went unanswered, but he said he spoke to the House speaker today. Christie would not disclose any details of the conversation, but clearly his anger over the no-vote was not mollified.

Following Christie's press conference Republican representatives from New York and New Jersey announced that the speaker promised a vote on the bill on Jan. 15.

"Getting critical aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy should be the first priority in the new Congress, and that was reaffirmed today with members of the New York and New Jersey delegations," Boehner said in a statement released late this afternoon.

Rep. Peter King Blasts Speaker Boehner on House Floor Watch Video

Boos as House Adjourns Without Hurricane Sandy Relief Watch Video

'Fiscal Cliff' Deal Passes House Despite GOP Holdouts Watch Video

Rep. Peter King, R-NY, whop spent much of the day criticizing Boehner, met with the speaker this afternoon and was confident that the speaker would keep his word and hold a vote later this month and offered for the first time a reason for why the bill was pulled.

"[Boehner] said there was much confusion and so much fighting going on over the fiscal cliff bill it would be damaging to the Republican caucus" to have voted on the relief bill Tuesday night.

Lawmakers were initially told by Boehner, R-Ohio, that the relief bill would get a vote on Tuesday night following an eleventh hour vote on the fiscal cliff bill. But in an unexpected switch, Boehner refused to put the relief bill to a vote, leading to lawmakers from parties yelling on the floor of the House.

Congress historically has responded to natural disasters by promptly funding relief efforts. It took just 11 days to pass a relief package for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Senate already passed its version of the bill that would replenish an emergency fund set to run out of cash next week and which will help repair subways and tunnels in New York City and rebuild parts of the New Jersey shore devastated by superstorm Sandy.

Time is particularly pressing, given that a new Congress will be sworn in Thursday. The Senate will therefore have to vote on the bill again before it comes to the House, which could be as late as February or March.

"This was a betrayal," Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., told ABC News.com. "It's just reprehensible. It's an indefensible error in judgment not have given relief to these people that are so devastated."

Rep. King, took the floor of the House and to the airwaves and aimed his outrage squarely at Boehner, accusing him plunging "a cruel knife in the back" of storm-ravaged residents "who don't have shelter, don't have food," he said during a House session this morning.

"This is not the United States. This should not be the Republican Party. This shouldn't not be the Republican leadership," King said on the floor of the House.

He made no attempt to hide his anger, suggesting that residents in New York and New Jersey should stop sending money to Republicans and even questioning whether he could remain a member of the party.

"Anyone who donates one cent to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee should have their head examined," King, a staunch conservative and Republican congressman for 10 years, told CNN.

"They have written off New York and New Jersey. They've written me off…. Party loyalty, I'm over that. When your people are literally freezing in the winter… Then why should I help the Republican Party?" he added.

He said that Boehner refused to talk to Republican members from New York and New Jersey when they tried to ask him about the vote Tuesday night.

"He just decided to sneak off in the dark of night," King said.

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Central African Republic rebels halt advance, agree to peace talks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RELIEF IN BANGUI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Amazon fends off Apple claim to "Appstore" name

OAKLAND: A federal judge on Wednesday rejected Apple's claim of false advertising for Amazon.com to refer to its online shop for mobile gadget applications as an "app store."

"Apple has failed to establish that Amazon made any false statement of fact that actually deceived or had the tendency to deceive a substantial segment of its audience," US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton said in her ruling.

"The mere use of 'Appstore' by Amazon to designate a site for viewing and downloading/purchasing apps cannot be construed as a representation that the nature, characteristics, or quality of the Amazon Appstore is the same as that of the Apple App Store."

Apple in 2008 launched its App Store, which is stocked with mini-programs for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices.

Amazon in late 2011 opened its "Appstore," which sells applications tailored for Android-powered mobile devices for the Seattle, Washington-based retail giant's Kindle Fire tablets.

Apple sued Amazon, claiming its rival was engaging in false advertising as well as trademark infringement.

US officials are still considering Apple's application to trademark the term "App Store," but that did not deter the company from pressing its case in Hamilton's courtroom in the California city of Oakland.

Software titan Microsoft is among the companies that have weighed in against letting the Cupertino, California, company have a trademark giving it the exclusive right to call a mobile applications market an "app store."

- AFP/jc

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SC notice to Centre and state on women safety

NEW DELHI: In the backdrop of Delhi's gruesome gang-rape and a spontaneous outpouring of public outrage, the Supreme Court on its first sitting in the New Year on Wednesday looked determined to make women feel safer and considered two PILs while seeking responses of the Centre and states in respect to one of them.

If a bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir agreed to list for hearing on Thursday a PIL by an ex-IAS officer seeking among other things suspension of MPs and MLAs chargesheeted in cases of sexual assault or crimes against women, another headed by Justice P Sathasivam sought responses of the Centre and all states to a PIL seeking stringent measures to make women safer.

The action was in Court number 3, where a bench of Justices Sathasivam, Ranjan Gogoi and V Gopalagowda not only entertained a PIL by advocate Mukul Kumar seeking elimination of discrimination against women and enhanced police protection, but suo motu (on its own) made all states party to the public interest litigation.

"We will comprehensively deal with the issues raised on safety of the women after receiving the responses from the state governments and the Centre," said the bench while giving them just four weeks to file reply affidavits.

Referring to the Wednesday TOI's front-page lead copy on another gang-rape, senior advocate Vikram Mahajan said the petitioner earnestly believed activating beat constables to protect women in the neighbourhood could prevent a lot of crime against women. "It is undisputed that women find the outside atmosphere increasingly unsafe," he said.

The petitioner also wanted the court to direct the concerned state governments to take strict penal action against khap panchayats advocating 'honour killing' and book the members of such bodies for murder.

"It is expedient in the present state of affairs for the Supreme Court to take cognizance of incidents spread across the country relating to violence against women and pass appropriate orders to the Centre and state governments to introduce and maintain comprehensive security measures for women," the petitioner said.

The petitioner referred to a 1991 judgment, in which the apex court had taken up the cause of widows being tortured and killed in Bihar and other parts of the country after being branded as witches. The court had called on the Bihar government to consider setting up of a special cell in each district where incidents of witch hunting had been reported. It had suggested posting policemen in plainclothes to collect information about crime in those affected districts.

The petitioner requested the court to direct setting up of all women police stations in all states to facilitate detecting crime against women, most of which goes unreported because of victim's fear of attracting social stigma. "Voluntary action bureaus and family counseling centres be set up in all police stations to provide rehabilitative services," the petitioner suggested.

The bench said there were certain states where all women police stations had been functioning. "We would like to ascertain the manner of their functioning from the states before passing any order," it said.

The PIL petitioner also sought implementation of the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in letter and spirit and suggested strengthening of support services for victims of gender based violence.

The other PIL by ex-IAS officer Promilla Shanker was mentioned by advocate Pareena Swarup before a bench headed by CJI Altamas Kabir, which has posted the matter for hearing on Thursday before a bench of Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra.

Shanker, a 1976 batch UP-cadre IAS officer, has sought initiation of administrative and judicial initiatives to make women feel safe and secure and imposition of deterrent punishment to the offenders. She wants fast-tracking of all rape case trials.

Among the immediate measures she wanted was the strict implementation of the apex court's November 30 judgment, which ordered Centre and states to immediately take stringent measures against eve-teasing. But, the most striking relief she sought was "to suspend the membership and privileges of tainted MPs and MLAs, who are charge sheeted for rape and murder".

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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

___

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

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

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House Hesitates, Cites Cliff Deal Spending

Top House Republicans today opposed a bipartisan compromise that passed the Senate in the wee hours of New Year's Day to avert the "fiscal cliff," amid concerns about the cost of spending and extending tax cuts in the plan.

If House Republicans tweak the legislation, as they seem likely to do, there's no clear path for its return to the Senate before a new Congress is sworn in Thursday.

GOP leaders emerged from a morning conference meeting disenchanted by the legislative package devised by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Biden early this morning, with several insisting they cannot vote on it as it now stands.

"I do not support the bill," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said as he left the meeting. "We're looking for the best path forward. No decisions have been made yet."

It's almost certain that Republicans will attempt to amend the bill in order to win over the support of more conservatives.

House Speaker John Boehner refused to comment on the meeting, but his spokesman said "the lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members in today's meeting."

"Conversations with members will continue throughout the afternoon on the path forward," Brendan Buck said in a statement.

As lawmakers wrestled with the legislation, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill's added spending combined with the cost of extending tax cuts for those making under $400,000 would actually add $3.9 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years. The Joint Committee on Taxation reached a similar conclusion.

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The impasse once again raised the specter of sweeping tax hikes on all Americans and deep spending cuts' taking effect later this week.

"This is all about time, and it's about time that we brought this to the floor," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said after emerging from a meeting with Democrats.

"It was a bill that was passed in the U.S. senate 89-8. Tell me when you've had that on a measure as controversial as this?" she said of the overwhelming vote.

Pelosi could not say, however, whether the measure had the backing of most House Democrats. "Our members are making their decisions now," she said.

Biden, who brokered the deal with McConnell, joined Democrats for a midday meeting on Capitol Hill seeking to shore up support for the plan.

While Congress technically missed the midnight Dec. 31 deadline to avert the so-called cliff, both sides have expressed eagerness to enact a post-facto fix before Americans go back to work and the stock market opens Wednesday.

"This may take a little while but, honestly, I would argue we should vote on it today," said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who sits on the Budget Committee. "We know the essential details and I think putting this thing to bed before the markets is important.

"We ought to take this deal right now and we'll live to fight another day, and it is coming very soon on the spending front."

The Senate passed legislation shortly after 2 a.m. that would extend current tax rates on 98 percent of Americans, raise taxes on the wealthiest earners and delay by two months the pending automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs, known as the "sequester."

The measure passed by an overwhelming majority vote of 89-8, boosting the prospects that enough House members would follow suit to make it law.

If the House amends the bill, however, the fragile compromise could get shattered. The Senate would need to reconvene to consider the changes.

A Senate Democratic leadership aide told ABC News, "we did our work, and McConnell's office said they were confident of House passage. All bets are off if they amend our bill."

Meanwhile, most Senators have already returned home, dismissed early this morning by Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid.

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

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