Venezuela frets over ill Chavez as 2013 begins

CARACAS: Somber Venezuelans began 2013 fretting over their ubiquitous and garrulous leader Hugo Chavez, wondering what the future holds as the president wages a tough battle with cancer in a Havana hospital.

Chavez won re-election in October and is supposed to be sworn in on January 10, but that seems up in the air now, stoking the prospect of major upheaval in a nation that sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves.

If Chavez, who has completely dominated Venezuelan political life since taking power in 1999, is declared incapacitated before then -- or dies -- the Venezuela constitution demands that new elections are called within 30 days.

As Chavez's health crisis has deepened, his handpicked political heir, vice president Nicolas Maduro, a burly and moustachioed former bus driver and union leader, has been trying to look more prominent and statesmanlike.

But the key question is whether Chavismo, Chavez's left-wing social movement marked by patronage and generous government handouts to the poor, can survive without him.

If new elections are held, opposition leader Henrique Capriles -- who gave the comandante a good run for his money in the October election -- might prevail and seek to begin a new era.

For now, both the government and the opposition are leaving open the possibility of postponing the inauguration, depending on how Chavez's health evolves.

Less than two years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine the country without the larger-than-life Chavez at the helm.

His outsized personality and bombastic style of governing did not permit the ascension of an heir apparent within his United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

But before leaving for Cuba in December, Chavez anointed Maduro as his chosen successor and for many that signalled that the process of transition had begun.

Venezuelans began 2013 pondering what political life without Chavez might be like.

New Year's Eve revelry was tempered, and official acts -- two open air concerts -- were cancelled outright out of respect for the ex-paratrooper who has irked the United States for years by aligning his country with such countries as Iran, Cuba and Syria.

Chavez underwent his fourth cancer-related surgery three weeks ago in Havana and has been bed-ridden ever since. Information on his condition is scant, with the government admitting only to "complications" in his recovery.

The streets of Caracas were practically deserted early Tuesday.

"You can feel the sadness in the air. People are sorry about what is happening with Chavez," said a doorman who gave his name as Adrian, alluding to the toned-down parties of the night before.

"I hope we will have a better year in 2013. Nothing will be the same without Chavez, no matter who the next president is."

Twitter has been red hot with comments and rumours to the effect that Chavez, the tough-talking 58-year-old face of the populist left in Latin America, is fading fast or even dead already.

From Havana, Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza -- the president's brother in law -- fired back, seeking to restore calm.

"Countrymen, do NOT believe mean-spirited rumours." Arreaza tweeted. "President Chavez spent the day quietly and in stable condition, in the company of his children," the minister wrote on Monday evening.

Even Capriles, the young opposition leader, warned Venezuelans to stay away from rumours.

"Let us not fall victim to the trap of rumours and hatred," Capriles tweeted. "Let's spend energy on building, not destroying."

The country has been in a state of fretful limbo since Sunday's warning that Chavez's recovery was "not without risk."

"It is only natural. We have not seen him in days," said Adrian, the doorman.

Indeed, since Chavez left for Havana more than three weeks ago, he has not appeared in public, nor have photos of him been published -- something highly rare for a man who is usually all over the media in one form or another.

Chavez had declared himself cancer free in July, more than a year after being diagnosed with the disease in the pelvic region. The exact nature of the cancer has never been made public and no official medical report has been released.

Many Venezuelans attended Mass and other religious ceremonies Monday to pray for him.

- AFP/jc

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Paris Apple Store robbed of more than $1 million in goods

Apple's Paris store near the Paris Opera House, in a photo taken during the iPhone 5 launch this past September.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Armed robbers broke into the Apple Store in Paris on New Year's Eve and made off with more than a million dollars' worth of merchandise, according to reports.

Masked suspects wielding handguns forced their way into the store through an employee entrance as a janitor was leaving, about three hours after the store's 6 p.m. closing time, England's Telegraph reported. The janitor was "lightly injured," the news outlet said. The Wall Street Journal cited French reports and said a security guard had also been overpowered by the thieves.

The Journal said two suspects forced their way in, and the Telegraph reported that four or five suspects total were involved in the robbery.

The thieves ignored display items and grabbed boxes of goods, loading them onto a truck. The whole operation took about 40 minutes, the Telegraph reported.

The total value of the stolen goods was estimated at about 1 million euros, or $1.32 million. But the exact total is not yet known, as an inventory is still being taken, the Telegraph reported.

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The art of the "fiscal cliff" deal

Nobody said it would be easy.

Senators voted in the pre-dawn hours of New Year's Day to pass the long-sought agreement on the "fiscal cliff" and the House readies for its turn as soon as today, which, if the House passes it, would officially avert the tax hikes and spending cuts that technically took effect at midnight (the deal, when signed by the president, will make the new tax rates and spending retroactive to midnight).

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Biden advises not to predict outcome of "cliff" deal

How did the politicians involved get to their final agreement? Here's the rundown, according to officials familiar with the talks and with the White House's thinking:

Friday through Sunday: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's opening offer Friday night to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was a $750,000 income tax threshold and no jobless benefits and no extension of the earned-income tax credit and other low-income tax breaks, means-testing Medicare, and the Bush era estate tax rates. Offers bounced back and forth Saturday and on Sunday, Reid opted out and handed talks over to Vice President Joe Biden (at McConnell's suggestion). President Obama, Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were in tandem through the talks. Delaying the federal spending cuts, or sequester, fell out of the talks on Sunday but McConnell came down to $550,000 in income tax threshold and some estate tax concessions reflected in the final deal.

Sunday, 8 p.m. ET: Mr. Obama and senior staff met in the Oval Office to discuss their final counter-offer to McConnell. The president set the $400K and $450K income threshold with one-year of jobless benefits and some delay of the sequester. Biden and McConnell talked through the night. Their last call was at 12:45 a.m.

After that, Mr. Obama and Biden met in the Oval until 2 a.m. to go over final details. Mr. Obama sent his legislative liaison Rob Nabors to Capitol Hill at 2 a.m. to begin drafting a bill with Senate Democrats. Biden and McConnell spoke again at 6:45 a.m. The rest of Monday was devoted to resolving the sequester impasse.

Monday, 9 p.m. ET: Biden and McConnell sealed the deal by telephone (Biden spoke to McConnell after clearing final details with Mr. Obama). The president then called Reid and Pelosi for one final OK and the deal was announced/leaked/confirmed.

The officials also pointed out that to get to the final deal, moving Republicans from a position of no tax increases in debt ceiling debate to tax increases through tax reform after Mr. Obama's re-election to nothing more than $1 million in higher rates and now to $400,000 and $450,000 thresholds is a significant policy and political victory (worth $620 billion over 10 years).

When the big deal talks failed before Christmas, Mr. Obama's biggest goal was to get GOP buy-in on higher tax rates for the wealthy. It is regarded as one of the most significant policy victories in two decades, the officials said.

Compromising on the two-month sequester was difficult, the officials added. The White House wanted a full year of waiving the sequester but there was no time to negotiate the difficult policy details (the sequester talks took literally all of Monday).

As for the deal's effect on the deficit, it does not cut the deficit relative to what would have occurred if all the fiscal cliff tax cuts had been erased (meaning all Bush tax cuts expired) and the sequester kicked in full force. But, relative to a baseline that assumes all existing tax policy would have continued, the deal raises $620 billion in revenue. The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) fix is not counted by the WH, for example, because its extension was assumed in the existing policy baseline (that doesn't mean it won't cost anything; just that the White House doesn't count the cost).

The jobless benefit extension for one year cost $30 billion and that is not paid for. The Medicare "doc fix" is paid for by savings that will be taken from other provider payouts in Medicare. It costs $31 billion, meaning those provider cuts will pay for protecting doctors from a 27 percent automatic cut in premiums.

And $12 billion in new revenue comes from allowing 401Ks and other retirement instruments into Roth IRAs. This is the revenue that forms half of the offset of the two-month sequester delay. The other $12 billion will come from a 50-50 split of non-defense and defense cuts.

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White House Revels in Fiscal Cliff 'Victory'

Jan 1, 2013 12:13pm

It’s hard to find anyone in Washington happy about the outcome of the “fiscal cliff” brinksmanship.

But inside the Obama White House, senior officials are elated by what they call a significant presidential achievement:  breaking longstanding Republican intransigence on taxes.

The deal passed by the Senate early this morning, with the endorsement of all but seven of the 47 Republicans, would raise $620 billion in new revenue, hiking tax rates on households earning more than $450,000 a year.

The income tax hike would be the first in two decades.

“Keep in mind that just last month Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans,” President Obama said Monday. “Obviously, the agreement that’s currently being discussed would raise those rates and raise them permanently.”

The spin from the White House – casting the new revenue as a major victory – is at least partly aimed at grumbling liberals who have accused Obama of capitulating on a key campaign pledge: hiking tax rates on households making $250,000 or more.

“Anyone looking at these negotiations, especially given Obama’s previous behavior, can’t help but reach one main conclusion: Whenever the president says that there’s an issue on which he absolutely, positively won’t give ground, you can count on him, you know, giving way – and soon, too,” liberal economist Paul Krugman wrote today in the New York Times.

“The idea that you should only make promises and threats you intend to make good on doesn’t seem to be one that this particular president can grasp.”

Still, the White House believes the concessions Obama extracted from Republicans on taxes puts him in a stronger position for negotiating on the debt ceiling and “sequester” in the coming weeks.

The president now says any deal to offset the automatic “sequester” spending cuts will have to be balanced – including additional new tax revenue, not cuts alone.

But Republican leaders see the outcome, and the fiscal fights ahead, much differently.

GOPers are touting permanent extension of many of the Bush-era tax cuts as a victory in its own right. They also believe the resolution of the tax revenue debate will allow for greater focus on spending cuts and entitlement overhaul, essentially resetting the national dialogue.

“Frankly, we’ve denied [Obama], I think, his most important piece of leverage in any negotiation going forward,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who sits on the House Budget Committee, said on MSNBC. “So I particularly like that part.

“The sequester is in front of us. The continuing resolution runs out the end of March and, obviously, the debt ceiling. All of those things honestly are Republican leverage, not Democratic,” he said.

“So I think there will be opportunities to deal with the spending issue next year.”

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State Department made "grievous mistake" over Benghazi: Senate report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department made a "grievous mistake" in keeping the U.S. mission in Benghazi open despite inadequate security and increasingly alarming threat assessments in the weeks before a deadly attack by militants, a Senate committee said on Monday.

A report from the Senate Homeland Security Committee on the September 11 attacks on the U.S. mission and a nearby CIA annex, in which the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans died, faulted intelligence agencies for not focusing tightly enough on Libyan extremists.

It also faulted the State Department for waiting for specific warnings instead of improving security.

The committee's assessment, "Flashing Red: A Special Report On The Terrorist Attack At Benghazi," follows a scathing report by an independent State Department accountability review board that resulted in a top security official resigning and three others at the department being relieved of their duties.

Joseph Lieberman, an independent senator who chairs the committee, said that in thousands of documents it reviewed, there was no indication that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had personally denied a request for extra funding or security for the Benghazi mission. He said key decisions were made by "midlevel managers" who have since been held accountable.

Republican Senator Susan Collins said it was likely that others needed to be held accountable, but that decision was best made by the Secretary of State, who has the best understanding "of how far up the chain of command the request for additional security went."

The attacks and the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens put diplomatic security practices at posts in risky areas under scrutiny and raised questions about whether intelligence on militant activity in the region was adequate.

The Senate report said the lack of specific intelligence of an imminent threat in Benghazi "may reflect a failure" by intelligence agencies to focus closely enough on militant groups with weak or no operational ties to al Qaeda and its affiliates.

"With Osama bin Laden dead and core al Qaeda weakened, a new collection of violent Islamist extremist organizations and cells have emerged in the last two to three years," the report said. That trend has been seen in the "Arab Spring" countries undergoing political transition or military conflict, it said.

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The report recommended that U.S. intelligence agencies "broaden and deepen their focus in Libya and beyond, on nascent violent Islamist extremist groups in the region that lack strong operational ties to core al Qaeda or its main affiliate groups."

Neither the Senate report nor the unclassified accountability review board report pinned blame for the Benghazi attack on a specific militant group. The FBI is investigating who was behind the assaults.

President Barack Obama, in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, said the United States had "very good leads" about who carried out the attacks. He did not provide details.

The Senate committee said the State Department should not have waited for specific warnings before acting on improving security in Benghazi.

It also said it was widely known that the post-revolution Libyan government was "incapable of performing its duty to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel," but the State Department failed to fill the security gap.

"Despite the inability of the Libyan government to fulfill its duties to secure the facility, the increasingly dangerous threat assessments, and a particularly vulnerable facility, the Department of State officials did not conclude the facility in Benghazi should be closed or temporarily shut down," the report said. "That was a grievous mistake."

The Senate panel reviewed changing comments made by the Obama administration after the attack, which led to a political firestorm in the run-up to the November presidential election and resulted in U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice withdrawing her name from consideration to replace Clinton, who is stepping down early next year.

Rice had said her initial comments that the attack grew out of a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam film were based on talking points provided by intelligence agencies.

Lieberman said it was not the job of intelligence agencies to formulate unclassified talking points and they should decline such requests in the future.

The report said the original talking points included a line saying "we know" that individuals associated with al Qaeda or its affiliates participated in the attacks. But the final version had been changed to say: "There are indications that extremists participated," and the reference to al Qaeda and its affiliates was deleted.

The report said that while James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, had offered to provide the committee with a detailed chronology of how the talking points were written and evolved, this had still not been delivered to Capitol Hill because the administration had spent weeks "debating internally" whether or not it should turn over information considered "deliberative" to Congress.

(Editing by Warren Strobel and David Brunnstrom)

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Singapore ushers in 2013 with fireworks display at Marina Bay

SINGAPORE: It was a celebration full of song, dance and a magnificent display of fireworks as Singapore ushered in 2013 at the Marina Bay countdown.

Spectators thronged the Marina Bay area to soak up the celebrations as the nation counted down to the New Year!

And with a slew of performances... there was something for everyone.

Whether it was grooving to the beats of regional acts like Korean Hip Hop group M.I.B.... or homegrown talents like Taufik Batisah and John Klass and his band The Professionals.

One of the highlights of the night was from award winning musical group Jersey Boys.

Grant Almirall, Cast of Jersey Boys, said: "It's an amazing opportunity to perform for Singapore. It's raining at the moment but it's a rain or shine event so we still will be performing anyway. Hopefully, the crowd will be cheered up and ready for us. So yeah, it's going to be awesome."

Right after that, spectators were treated to an eight-minute fireworks display at the stroke of midnight.

- CNA/de

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BMW cars to get LTE WiFi

BMW's new LTE WiFi hotspot snaps into the cradle dock in the console, giving everyone in the car a fast Internet connection.

(Credit:
BMW)

Audi and Ford include WiFi hotspots in some of their models, but BMW maintains its high-performance reputation by offering an accessory for WiFi at LTE data speeds, the first time a
car has boasted this type of connectivity.

BMW's LTE adapter snaps into any BMW equipped with a phone cradle dock in the console. Passengers will be able to connect their personal electronics, such as phones and
tablets, to the WiFi hotspot and get data at LTE speeds. However, this adapter does not offer any data connection to a car's own dashboard infotainment electronics.

The adapter includes an 8 digit connection code, preventing other drivers from tailgating so as to leach off the hotspot while on the road. It also supports Near Field Communications (NFC), letting people merely hold their compatible devices next to the adapter to initiate the WiFi connection.

Drivers will need to plug a SIM card for an LTE data network into the adapter. In Europe, it is common for a phone company to offer multiple SIM cards for a single account, which might be more difficult to obtain in the U.S. The advantage of making the adapter SIM card-dependent is that it can be used in multiple markets.

The WiFi hardware is actually included in the adapter, not in the car. The adapter comes with a built-in battery, so that it can be used outside of the car for about an hour, according to BMW. An available kit will let owners plug the adapter into a USB port, keeping it powered up. That kit should also make it useful in BMW models without the cradle dock. Its default WiFi range is about three yards, suitable for a car's cabin, but it can be switched to a 10 yard range for more general use.

No pricing or availability has been announced for the U.S.

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Lovie Smith fired as Bears coach after 9 seasons

LAKE FOREST, Ill. The Chicago Bears fired coach Lovie Smith on Monday after the team missed the playoffs for the fifth time in six seasons.

Smith was informed of the decision by general manager Phil Emery on the day after the Bears beat Detroit to finish 10-6 but still didn't make the playoffs.

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NFL coaches, GMs sacked in firing frenzy

Smith led the Bears to a Super Bowl, but also saw his team collapse in the second half of the past two seasons. Hired in 2004, Smith led the Bears to three division titles, two NFC title games and a 2007 Super Bowl appearance in his nine seasons. His record is 81-63, and he leaves with one year left on his contract.

The Bears scheduled a news conference Tuesday to discuss the move.

Even though Chicago closed with a win, the Bears needed a loss by Minnesota to get into the playoffs. The Vikings, though, beat Green Bay to clinch a postseason spot, leaving Chicago as the second team since the postseason expanded to 12 teams to miss out after a 7-1 start. The other was Washington in 1996.

CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora reported Sunday that Smith's tenuous hold on his job "would be further imperiled should his team fail to get into the postseason."

But Smith, who had one year remaining on his current deal, shouldn't have any trouble finding work. League sources told La Canfora that Smith should land head-coaching interviews with other NFL teams.

Smith's record ranks third on the Bears' all-time list, behind George Halas and Mike Ditka.

The highlight of his tenure was the run to the title game that ended with a loss to the Indianapolis Colts. It was the first time two black coaches met for the championship, with Smith going against his mentor Tony Dungy.

The Bears made the playoffs just three times and posted three postseason victories under Smith. The 2010 team beat Seattle after the Seahawks won their division with a 7-9 record, but the Bears lost to Green Bay in the NFC title game at Soldier Field.

There was speculation Smith would be let go following the 2011 team's collapse, but he got one more year while general manager Jerry Angelo was fired.

Ultimately, the struggles on offense did him in.

Known for solid defenses, Smith oversaw a unit that was consistently effective and at times ranked among the league's best with stars such as Brian Urlacher, Lance Briggs and later Julius Peppers. Smith emphasized taking the ball away from the opposition, and no team did it more than the Bears with 310 during his tenure.

But on the other side, it was a different story.

Smith went through four offensive coordinators in Terry Shea, Ron Turner, Mike Martz and Mike Tice. He never could find the right formula, even as the Bears acquired stars such as quarterback Jay Cutler and receiver Brandon Marshall over the years.

The offensive line has struggled in a big way over the past few seasons after age took its toll on a group that was a strength during the 2005 and 2006 playoff seasons. The Bears were never able to replenish, spending first-round picks on Chris Williams (2008) and Gabe Carimi (2011) that did not pan out.

Williams had his contract terminated in October, ending a disappointing run, and Carimi struggled this season after missing most of his rookie year with a knee injury.

While Angelo took the fall after last season, Smith was not without blame in the personnel issues over the years. He pushed to bring in former Rams offensive lineman Orlando Pace and safety Adam Archuleta, players who succeeded in St. Louis when Smith was the defensive coordinator there but were busts with the Bears.

He had no bigger supporter than team matriarch Virginia McCaskey, but the fans seemed split on him. To some, he was a picture of calm, a coach who never lost his composure and never criticized his players in public, the anti-Ditka if you will.

History suggests fans who are clamoring for a high-profile replacement such as Bill Cowher or Jon Gruden might be disappointed. The last time the Bears went with an experienced NFL head coach was when Halas returned to the sideline in 1958.

They might, however, go with an offensive-minded coach for the first time since Mike Ditka was fired after the 1992 season, given the issues in that area.

That the Bears would be in this spot seemed unthinkable after they ripped Tennessee 51-20 on Nov. 4. They were sailing along at 7-1 and eyeing a big playoff run after collapsing the previous season, with the defense taking the ball away and scoring at an eye-opening rate to compensate for a struggling offense, but the schedule took a tougher turn.

They dropped back-to-back games to Houston and San Francisco and five of six in all before closing out with wins at Arizona and Detroit. Injuries mounted along the way, and what looked like a playoff run slipped from their grasp, just as it did after a promising start in 2011.

That year, they won seven of their first 10 only to wind up at 8-8 after a monumental collapse sparked by a season-ending injury to Cutler.

While Angelo was fired, Smith got spared and Emery took the job with a mandate to keep the coach at least one more year.

He quickly went to work retooling the roster, landing Marshall in a blockbuster trade with Miami that reunited Cutler with his favorite target in Denver.

He also added depth in other areas, bringing in Jason Campbell as the backup quarterback after Caleb Hanie failed the previous season and teaming running back Michael Bush in the backfield with Matt Forte.

All those moves sent expectations soaring. The results were awfully familiar, though.

Now, Smith's out of a job.

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

Congressional and White House negotiators are closing in on a deal to avert across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts that take effect at midnight, as the nation teeters on the edge of the so-called fiscal cliff.

An emerging tentative agreement would extend current tax rates for households making $450,000 or less; extend the estate tax at its current level of 35 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 unemployment benefits set to expire Tuesday and avert a steep cut to Medicare payments for doctors.

Both sides also seem willing to delay by three months automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs, the sources said, setting the stage for continued fiscal debate in the next few months tied to the debt ceiling.

Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., are leading the negotiations, sources said, holding several "good" conversations late into Sunday night and continuing a dialogue early this morning.

They are trying to broker an elusive compromise on taxes and spending that can win the support of bipartisan majorities in the Senate and House.

Even 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."

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.

Republican and Democratic Senate leaders wrangled all weekend over the outlines of a deal, but those talks eventually hit a brick wall on GOP insistence that Social Security savings be included in a deal.

"I want everyone to know I'm willing to get this done, but I need a dance partner," McConnell said Sunday, noting that he had directly reached out to Biden to break the impasse.

As part of any deficit reduction deal, the White House wants to raise income tax rates on people making more than $250,000 a year, a threshold on which President Obama campaigned for re-election.

Republicans, caving on outright opposition to any tax increases, want a higher income threshold for the tax hike of around $450,000, sources said. They also want to prevent the estate tax from rising above its current 35 percent rate on estates of $5.1 million or more.

"There is still significant distance between the two sides, but negotiations continue," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Sunday evening. "There is still time to reach an agreement, and we intend to continue negotiations."

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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