Syrian rebels attack military airport in northwest

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels, some from Islamist units, fired machineguns and mortars at helicopters grounded at a northern military air base near the main Aleppo-Damascus highway on Wednesday, a monitoring group said.

The al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham Brigade and other units operating in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib were attacking the Afis military airport near Taftanaz, the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

There was no immediate account of the fighting around the air base from Syrian state media.

Insurgents trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad see his air power as their main threat. They hold swathes of eastern and northern provinces, as well as a crescent of suburbs around the capital, Damascus, but have been unable to protect rebel-held territory from relentless attack by helicopters and jets.

In recent months, rebel units have besieged several military installations, especially along Syria's main north-south artery from Aleppo, its most populous city, to Damascus.

The Observatory's director, Rami Abdelrahman, said Wednesday's attack was the latest of several attempts to capture the base. A satellite image of the airport shows more than 40 helicopter landing pads, a runway and aircraft hangars.

An estimated 45,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011 with peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule but turned into an armed revolt after months of government repression.

In Damascus, Assad's forces fired artillery and mortars at the eastern districts of Douma, Harasta, Irbin and Zamlaka, where rebels have a foothold, activists living there said.

Syria's civil war is the longest and deadliest conflict to emerge from uprisings that began sweeping the Arab world in 2011 and has developed a significant sectarian element.

Rebels, mostly from the Sunni Muslim majority, confront Assad's army and security forces, dominated by his Shi'ite-derived Alawite sect, which, along with some other minorities, fears revenge if he falls.

U.N.-led diplomatic peace efforts have stumbled. Western and many Sunni Arab states demand Assad's immediate removal, an idea resisted by Russia, China and Syria's Shi'ite ally Iran.

The rebels say they will not negotiate unless Assad, who has vowed to fight to the death, leaves power.

More than 110 people, including at least 31 of Assad's soldiers and militiamen, were killed in Syria on the first day of 2013, according to the Observatory, which tracks the conflict from Britain using a network of contacts inside the country.

(Editing by Peter Graff and Alistair Lyon)

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Tennis: Impressive Azarenka reaches Brisbane International quarter-finals

BRISBANE, Australia: World number one Victoria Azarenka moved into the quarter-finals of the Brisbane International with a hard-fought 6-3, 6-3 win over German Sabine Lisicki on Wednesday.

Azarenka was made to work hard for her win by the hard-hitting Lisicki, who traded punishing ground strokes with the top seed but was let down by a high error rate -- 36 unforced errors compared with only nine from her opponent.

In a match much closer than the score suggests, Lisicki had her chances but was unable to take them.

She had eight break points on Azarenka's serve but was only able to convert three, whereas Azarenka -- who won her maiden WTA title in Brisbane in 2009 -- broke Lisicki six times to seize the advantage.

The German also served poorly, landing only 52 per cent of her first serves and sending down five double faults. But she stayed in the match thanks to the quality of her hitting from the baseline.

"I knew what kind of player she is and I felt like she did improve from maybe the last time we played," Azarenka said.

"I just knew that there is something that I have to deal with. So I was prepared to take some bullets today.

"But I just tried to stay focused on executing my game. I knew she was going to make some, she was going to miss some, so I just had to stay with her and look for my chance."

Azarenka now plays Kazakhstan qualifier Ksenia Pervak in the quarter-finals.

Earlier, Germany's Angelique Kerber, the only player to defeat Serena Williams since the French Open in May, came from behind to beat unheralded Puerto Rican Monica Puig in three sets.

The 24-year-old fourth-seed looked in huge trouble as she trailed 1-4 in the third set but fought back to force a tiebreak.

Puig then led 4-0 in the tiebreak only for Kerber to fight back again and take the match 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (9/7) in two and a half hours.

She will next take on Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the quarter-finals.

"I was just thinking point by point (when she was down in the third set)," Kerber said.

"I was not thinking 'What's happening?' I was just really on court and just trying to hit the ball, move very well, and just fight for every point.

"It was a surprise how she played. I didn't know her before, but I'm sure that she'll be in the top 50 soon."

Sloane Stephens set up a quarter-final against fellow American Serena Williams when she beat Sweden's Sofia Arvidsson 6-3, 6-4. Ukraine's Lesia Tsurenko, who only came into the tournament when Maria Sharapova pulled out, downed Australia's Jarmila Gajdosova 1-6, 6-1, 6-4.

- AFP/fa

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Vadra probe panel is cover up to 'gargantuan land scams': Ashok Khemka

CHANDIGARH: Senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka has termed Haryana's decision to set up a panel to probe his orders to cancel mutation of a land deal between Robert Vadra and DLF as a "cover up to the gargantuan land scams", and sought relevant file notings from the state government.

Four days after the high-level panel submitted its inquiry report into the cancellation of mutation of 3.5 acre of land in Gurgaon, Khemka stood his ground on his findings in the controversial deal.

In a letter to Haryana Chief Secretary P K Chaudhery on Monday, Khemka, who had as Director General of Consolidation of Holdings, cancelled the mutation of land deal between businessman Robert Vadra and real estate giant DLF, wrote that his orders under Sec 42 of East-Punjab Holdings (Consolidation and Prevention of Fragmentation) Act, 1948, were "quasi- judicial and final."

Currently MD of Haryana Seeds Development Corporation, Khemka has also sought a copy of the government order constituting the inquiry committee, its terms of reference and relevant file noting pages constituting the panel.

On being contacted, Khemka said the committee is a "sham to justify possible action against me as a cover to the gargantuan land scams".

"All this kind of humiliation and mental torture is to break me down psychologically," he claimed, adding that "vested interests" in the government have "pre-judged" the matter.

He said he is surprised that the affected individual or the corporate house is "not ostensibly aggrieved."

In his letter Khemka said, "the remedy for the affected party is to challenge the order by way of filing a writ petition in the high court".

Khemka has cited a case in which the Punjab and Haryana High Court had on September 6 last year directed the Hooda government to compile all orders of the DG consolidation, where precious panchayat lands were transferred to influential realtor companies.

"One of my orders pertaining to Chirsi village (Faridabad district) is also under challenge," he wrote.

The probe panel had submitted its report to the state Chief Secretary on December 28.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Vadra had sold 3.53 acre of land at Shikohpur village in Gurgaon district to DLF.

As DG Consolidation, Khemka had on October 15, last year set aside the mutation on the grounds that the assistant consolidation officer who had sanctioned it was not authorised to do so.

Chaudhery, meanwhile, said he was "examining" the probe panel's report.

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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."

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Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

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

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

'Fiscal Cliff' Negotiations: Congress Reaches Agreement Watch Video

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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Surge in demand for pet hotel service during year-end holidays

SINGAPORE: Pet hotels are becoming a hit with owners who want to ensure that their furry friends are in good hands while they are away.

Some hotels said demand went up by about 30 per cent last year, compared with 2011 while occupancy rates are almost always full during the year-end holidays.

From massages to soothe aching joints to customised spa sessions that come with a clay pack wrap of nutrients and minerals, the pets are enjoying a break of their own at pet-wellness centres, such as pet hotel, Petopia, while their owners are away.

Petopia's marketing director Richard Wee said: "They find this place more like a playroom. We have one case of a customer's dog that after they left the hotel and came back for grooming one day, the dog ran all the way back to the playroom to just look for his friends to spend time with during the hotel stay."

Petopia can take in up to 50 animals and rooms are usually booked a few months in advance.

Pet owners fork out between S$75 and S$158 for a night's stay.

"We are looking at three different crowds. The year-end holiday goers, they clear their annual leave. We have families who bring the children overseas during school holidays and a large number of expatriates who return home for the year-end season," said Mr Wee.

Safety and security are the top concerns of owners, along with separation pangs.

Mr Wee said: "We have customers who choose not to go away for many years because they are afraid of not having someone to look after their pets well."

To allay such concerns, the hotel installed webcams in the building for owners to track their pets' movements.

Er Yanshan, a pet owner, said: "It's better than just leaving your pet at home with no one to look after it, so it's a good idea."

What's more alarming is when owners abandon their pets.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said more than 100 animals were given up at the centre in December 2012 by owners who wanted to go away.

That is twice the number, compared with the other months of the same year.

Mr Lee Yao Huang, who is animal care officer at SPCA, said: "Some of them might decide to give it to SPCA, or they just abandoned it at their HDB area or grass patch near their place.

"We actually give them some help by advising them to put it on our re-homing notice on our SPCA website or they can put up brochures and notices on the vet's clinics or supermarkets on their notice boards."

And for those who don't want to fork out too much at the pet hotel, another way is to get friends or relatives to play pet-sitter.

- CNA/fa

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Cut down my security: BJP leader to Mumbai police chief

MUMBAI: Leader of opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Council, Vinod Tawade today urged the Mumbai police commissioner to withdraw eight of the ten policemen deployed for his security saying they could be better used for the security of citizens.

Tawade, a prominent BJP leader, met police chief Satyapal Singh at the Police Commissionerate here and urged him to withdraw his security with immediate effect.

Several policemen are deployed for security of politicians and social figures. If a major chunk of these personnel are drawn for maintaining law and order, then there would a decline in crime, he said.

The recent attacks on senior citizens and women, murder of advocate Pallavi Purkayastha in Wadala and killing of a girl in Chetna College had forced him to take a decision on withdrawing his security, he said.

Responding to Tawade's request for withdrawing security, police commissioner Satyapal Singh said, "We would review threat perception to the BJP leader and accordingly would take a call on withdrawing his security cover.

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Clinton receiving blood thinners to dissolve clot

WASHINGTON (AP) — Doctors treating Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for a blood clot in her head said blood thinners are being used to dissolve the clot and they are confident she will make a full recovery.

Clinton didn't suffer a stroke or neurological damage from the clot that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell at her home in early December, doctors said in a statement Monday.

Clinton, 65, was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday when the clot turned up on a follow-up exam on the concussion, Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines said.

The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.

In their statement, Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mount Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said Clinton was making excellent progress and was in good spirits.

Clinton's complication "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist who is director of Duke University's stroke center. He is not involved in Clinton's care.

The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull. It's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein said.

Blood thinners usually are enough to treat the clot and it should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, Goldstein said.

Clinton returned to the U.S. from a trip to Europe, then fell ill with a stomach virus in early December that left her severely dehydrated and forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East. Until then, she had canceled only two scheduled overseas trips, one to Europe after breaking her elbow in June 2009 and one to Asia after the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Her condition worsened when she fainted, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from the virus. It was announced Dec. 13.

This isn't the first time Clinton has suffered a blood clot. In 1998, midway through her husband's second term as president, Clinton was in New York fundraising for the midterm elections when a swollen right foot led her doctor to diagnose a clot in her knee requiring immediate treatment.

Clinton had planned to step down as secretary of state at the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Whether she will return to work before she resigns remained a question.

Democrats are privately if not publicly speculating: How might her illness affect a decision about running for president in 2016?

After decades in politics, Clinton says she plans to spend the next year resting. She has long insisted she had no intention of mounting a second campaign for the White House four years from now. But the door is not entirely closed, and she would almost certainly emerge as the Democrat to beat if she decided to give in to calls by Democratic fans and run again.

Her age — and thereby health — would probably be a factor under consideration, given that Clinton would be 69 when sworn in, if she were elected in 2016. That might become even more of an issue in the early jockeying for 2016 if what started as a bad stomach bug becomes a prolonged, public bout with more serious infirmity.

Not that Democrats are willing to talk openly about the political implications of a long illness, choosing to keep any discussions about her condition behind closed doors. Publicly, Democrats reject the notion that a blood clot could hinder her political prospects.

"Some of those concerns could be borderline sexist," said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who worked for Clinton when she was a senator. "Dick Cheney had significant heart problems when he was vice president, and people joked about it. He took the time he needed to get better, and it wasn't a problem."

It isn't uncommon for presidential candidates' health — and age — to be an issue. Both in 2000 and 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had to rebut concerns he was too old to be commander in chief or that his skin cancer could resurface.

Two decades after Clinton became the first lady, signs of her popularity — and her political strength — are ubiquitous.

Obama had barely declared victory in November when Democrats started zealously plugging Clinton as their strongest White House contender four years from now, should she choose to take that leap.

"Wouldn't that be exciting?" House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared in December. "I hope she goes. Why wouldn't she?"

Even Republicans concede that were she to run, Clinton would be a force to be reckoned with.

"Trying to win that will be truly the Super Bowl," Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker and 2012 GOP presidential candidate, said in December. "The Republican Party today is incapable of competing at that level."

Americans admire Clinton more than any other woman in the world, according to a Gallup poll released Monday — the 17th time in 20 years that Clinton has claimed that title. And a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 57 percent of Americans would support Clinton as a candidate for president in 2016, with just 37 percent opposed. Websites have already cropped up hawking "Clinton 2016" mugs and tote bags.

Beyond talk of future politics, Clinton's three-week absence from the State Department has raised eyebrows among some conservative commentators who questioned the seriousness of her ailment after she canceled planned Dec. 20 testimony before Congress on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton had been due to discuss with lawmakers a scathing report she had commissioned on the attack. It found serious failures of leadership and management in two State Department bureaus were to blame for insufficient security at the facility. Clinton took responsibility for the incident before the report was released, but she was not blamed. Four officials cited in the report have either resigned or been reassigned.

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Associated Press writer Ken Thomas in Washington and AP Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

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Senate Approves 'Fiscal Cliff' Deal, Sends to House

Two hours after a midnight deadline for action, the Senate passed legislation early New Year's Day to avert the so-called fiscal cliff with an overwhelming vote of 89-8.

Senate passage set the stage for a final showdown in the House, where a vote could come as early as today.

"While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay," President Obama said in a statement shortly after the vote.

"There's more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I'm willing to do it. But tonight's agreement ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest Americans," he added.

The bill extends Bush-era tax cuts permanently for individuals making less than $400,000 per year and couples making less than $450,000.

The steep "sequester" budget cuts scheduled to go into effect with the New Year would be postponed for two months.

The deal also would affect taxes on investment income and estates, and extend unemployment benefits for a year.

Officials also decided at the last minute to use the measure to prevent a $900 pay raise for lawmakers due to take effect this spring.

'Fiscal Cliff': Lawmakers Scramble for Last-Minute Deal Watch Video

The failure of a deal to pass Congress by Jan. 1 technically triggers an income tax hike on all Americans and automatic spending cuts, although lawmakers could still prevent a tax hike by making retroactive any legislation that passes in the weeks ahead, experts said.

The deal at hand will not entirely solve the problem of the "fiscal cliff," however. Indeed, it could set up a new showdown on the same spending cuts in two months that would be 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.

In addition to extending current tax rates for households making $450,000 or less, the latest plan would raise the estate tax from 35 to 40 percent for estates larger than $5 million; and prevent the alternative minimum tax from hammering millions of middle-class workers.

Capital gains taxes would rise to 20 percent from 15 percent.

The deal would also extend for one year unemployment insurance benefits set to expire today for 2 million people, and avert a steep cut to Medicare payments for doctors.

"Working though the night and throughout the day we've reached an agreement with Sen. McConnell," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said early this morning prior to the vote.

"I've said all along our most important priority is protecting middle-class Americans, this legislation does that."

He said he is "disappointed" they were not able to make the grand bargain and that more work needs to be done in the future.

"But we tried. If we did nothing, the threat of a recession is very real," Reid concluded.

Speaking after Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the deal an "imperfect solution" and noted this should not be the model on how things get done in the Senate.

McConnell also thanked Vice President Joe Biden, who visited Capitol Hill late Monday night and brokered the deal with McConnell.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi issued a statement saying that when legislation clears the Senate, "I will present it to the House Democratic caucus."

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