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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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 return to his planned Hawaiian holiday vacation, reuniting with his family, who have been vacationing there since just 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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North Korean leader, in rare address, seeks end to confrontation with South

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for an end to confrontation between the two Koreas, technically still at war in the absence of a peace treaty to end their 1950-53 conflict, in a surprise New Year speech broadcast on state media.

The address by Kim, who took over power in the reclusive state after his father, Kim Jong-il, died in 2011, appeared to take the place of the policy-setting New Year editorial published in leading state newspapers.

But North Korea has offered olive branches before and Kim's speech does not necessarily signify a change in tack from a country which vilifies the United States and U.S. ally South Korea at every chance it gets.

Impoverished North Korea raised tensions in the region by launching a long-range rocket in December that it said was aimed at putting a scientific satellite in orbit, drawing international condemnation.

North Korea, which considers North and South as one country, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is banned from testing missile or nuclear technology under U.N. sanctions imposed after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons tests.

"An important issue in putting an end to the division of the country and achieving its reunification is to remove confrontation between the north and the south," Kim said in the address that appeared to be pre-recorded and was made at an undisclosed location.

"The past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war."

The New Year address was the first in 19 years by a North Korean leader after the death of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather. Kim Jong-il rarely spoke in public and disclosed his national policy agenda in editorials in state newspapers.

"(Kim's statement) apparently contains a message that he has an intention to dispel the current face-off (between the two Koreas), which could eventually be linked with the North's call for aid (from the South)," said Kim Tae-woo, a North Korea expert at the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification.

"But such a move does not necessarily mean any substantive change in the North Korean regime's policy towards the South."

The two Koreas have seen tensions rise to the highest level in decades after the North bombed a Southern island in 2010 killing two civilians and two soldiers.

The sinking of a South Korean navy ship earlier that year was blamed on the North but Pyongyang has denied it and accused Seoul of waging a smear campaign against its leadership.

Last month, South Korea elected as president Park Geun-hye, a conservative daughter of assassinated military ruler Park Chung-hee whom Kim Il-sung had tried to kill at the height of their Cold War confrontation.

Park has vowed to pursue engagement with the North and called for dialogue to build confidence but has demanded that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions, something it is unlikely to do.

Conspicuously absent from Kim's speech was any mention of the nuclear arms program.

(Additional reporting by Sung-Won Shim; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Japan's Sharp considering US$1.15b public offering: report

TOKYO: Embattled Japanese electronics firm Sharp is considering making a public share offering worth more than 100 billion yen ($1.15 billion) early this year, a report said Tuesday.

The public offering could take place in the spring with the firm hoping to use the funds to strengthen its mainstay liquid crystal display (LCD) business and improve its creditworthiness, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.

Sharp has started talks with major creditor banks and wants to include the capital increase scheme in a mid-term business plan to be announced as early as February, the mass-circulation daily said without naming its sources.

The cash-strapped company said in December it had struck a 9.9-billion-yen capital injection deal with US-based chipmaker Qualcomm as it moves to repair its tattered balance sheet.

The Qualcomm deal will see the pair jointly develop energy-efficient LCD panels for smartphones using the Japanese firm's technology, with the US company initially getting about 2.64 per cent of Sharp's stock.

Japan's battered electronics sector has suffered from a myriad of problems including a high yen, slowing demand in key export markets, fierce overseas competition and strategic mistakes that left its finances in ruins.

Sharp has suffered a series of credit rating downgrades and warned it expects to lose about $5.6 billion in the fiscal year to March 2013.

The Osaka-based maker of Aquos-brand electronics has announced thousands of job losses while cutting wages for employees -- from the factory floor to the boardroom -- and selling real estate to shore up its balance sheet.

Sharp said last year it had reached a capital injection deal worth about $800 million with Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision, which makes Apple gadgets in China, but the deal stalled as Sharp's share price nosedived.

-AFP/ac

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Indian Air Force to airlift 370 stranded passengers between Jammu, Leh

JAMMU: Indian Air Force will today airlift 370 passengers stranded between winter capital city Jammu and Leh belt of Ladakh region, officials said.

"IAF would be airlifting 370 stranded people between Jammu and Leh today," PRO, ministry of defence, S N Acharya told PTI.

IL-76 would ferry 120 people, mostly belonging to Kargil district of Ladakh region, from Jammu to Leh and 250 people from Leh to Jammu, Acharya said.

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Clinton's blood clot an uncommon complication

The kind of blood clot in the skull that doctors say Hillary Rodham Clinton has is relatively uncommon but can occur after an injury like the fall and concussion the secretary of state was diagnosed with earlier this month.

Doctors said Monday that an MRI scan revealed a clot in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind Clinton's right ear.

The clot did not lead to a stroke or neurological damage and is being treated with blood thinners, and she will be released once the proper dose is worked out, her doctors said in a statement.

Clinton has been at New York-Presbyterian Hospital since Sunday, when the clot was diagnosed during what the doctors called a routine follow-up exam. At the time, her spokesman would not say where the clot was located, leading to speculation it was another leg clot like the one she suffered behind her right knee in 1998.

Clinton had been diagnosed with a concussion Dec. 13 after a fall in her home that was blamed on a stomach virus that left her weak and dehydrated.

The type of clot she developed, a sinus venous thrombosis, "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 neurologist Dr. Larry Goldstein. He is director of Duke University's stroke center and has no role in Clinton's care or personal knowledge of it.

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 explained.

It should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, he said.

Dr. Joseph Broderick, chairman of neurology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, also called Clinton's problem "relatively uncommon" after a concussion.

He and Goldstein said the problem often is overdiagnosed. They said scans often show these large "draining pipes" on either side of the head are different sizes, which can mean blood has pooled or can be merely an anatomical difference.

"I'm sure she's got the best doctors in the world looking at her," and if they are saying she has no neurological damage, "I would think it would be a pretty optimistic long-term outcome," Broderick said.

A review article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 describes the condition, which more often occurs in newborns or young people but can occur after a head injury. With modern treatment, more than 80 percent have a good neurologic outcome, the report says.

In the statement, Clinton's doctors said she "is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff."

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Online:

Medical journal: http://dura.stanford.edu/Articles/Stam_NEJM05.pdf

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Senate Approves 'Fiscal Cliff' Deal, Sends to House

Hours past a self-imposed deadline for action, the Senate passed legislation early New Year's Day to neutralize a fiscal cliff combination of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that kicked in at midnight. The pre-dawn vote was a lopsided 89-8.

Senate passage set the stage for a final showdown in the House, where a vote was expected later Tuesday or perhaps Wednesday on the measure, which also raises tax rates on wealthy Americans.

Even by the recent dysfunctional standards of government-by-gridlock, the activity at both ends of historic Pennsylvania Avenue was remarkable as the administration and lawmakers spent the final hours of 2012 haggling over long-festering differences.

"It shouldn't have taken this long to come to an agreement, and this shouldn't be the model for how we do things around here," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who negotiated the agreement with Vice President Joe Biden.

Under the deal, taxes would remain steady for the middle class and rise at incomes over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples — levels higher than President Barack Obama had campaigned for in his successful drive for a second term in office.

Spending cuts totaling $24 billion over two months aimed at the Pentagon and domestic programs would be deferred. That would allow the White House and lawmakers time to regroup before plunging very quickly into a new round of budget brinkmanship certain to revolve around Republican calls to rein in the cost of Medicare and other government benefit programs.

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.

"One thing we can count on with respect to this Congress is that if there's even one second left before you have to do what you're supposed to do, they will use that last second," the president said in a mid-afternoon status update on the talks. Yet when the roll was called nearly 12 hours later, only six Republicans and two Democrats opposed the measure.

As darkness fell on the last day of the year, Obama, Biden and their aides were at work in the White House, and lights burned in the House and Senate. Democrats complained that Obama had given away too much in agreeing to limit tax increases to incomes over $450,000, far above the $250,000 level he campaigned on. Yet some Republicans recoiled at the prospect of raising taxes at all.

Democratic senators said they expected a post-midnight vote on the measure. They spoke after a closed-door session with Vice President Joseph Biden, who brokered the deal with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

"The argument is that this is the best that can be done on a bipartisan basis," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., when asked about the case the vice president had delivered behind closed doors.

Passage would send the measure to the House, where Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, refrained from endorsing a package as yet unseen by his famously rebellious rank-and-file. He said the House would not vote on any Senate-passed measure "until House members — and the American people — have been able to review" it.

Numerous GOP officials said McConnell and his aides had kept the speaker's office informed about the progress of the talks.

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

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Chavez suffers new post-surgery complications

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is suffering more complications linked to a respiratory infection that hit him after his fourth cancer operation in Cuba, his vice president said in a somber broadcast on Sunday.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro flew to Cuba to visit Chavez in the hospital as supporters' fears grew for the ailing 58-year-old socialist leader, who has not been seen in public nor heard from in three weeks.

Chavez had already suffered unexpected bleeding caused by the six-hour operation on December 11 for an undisclosed form of cancer in his pelvic area. Officials said doctors then had to fight a respiratory infection.

"Just a few minutes ago we were with President Chavez. He greeted us and he himself talked about these complications," Maduro said in the broadcast, adding that the third set of complications arose because of the respiratory infection.

"Thanks to his physical and spiritual strength, Comandante Chavez is confronting this difficult situation."

Maduro, flanked by his wife Attorney-General Cilia Flores, Chavez's daughter Rosa Virginia and her husband, Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, said he would remain in Havana while Chavez's condition evolved.

He said Chavez's condition remained "delicate" - a term he has used since the day after the surgery, when he warned Venezuelans to prepare for difficult times and urged them to keep the president in their prayers.

"We trust that the avalanche of love and solidarity with Comandante Chavez, together with his immense will to live and the care of the best medical specialists, will help our president win this new battle," Maduro said.

A senior government official in Caracas said the New Year's Eve party in the capital's central Plaza Bolivar had been canceled. "Everyone pray for strength for our comandante to overcome this difficult moment," the official, Jacqueline Faria, added on Twitter after making the announcement.

OIL-FINANCED SOCIALISM

Chavez's resignation for health reasons, or his death, would upend politics in the OPEC nation where his personalized brand of oil-financed socialism has made him a hero to the poor but a pariah to critics who call him a dictator.

His condition is being closely watched around Latin America, especially in other nations run by leftist governments, from Cuba to Bolivia, which depend on subsidized fuel shipments and other aid from Venezuela for their fragile economies.

Chavez has not provided details of the cancer that was first diagnosed in June 2011, leading to speculation among Venezuela's 29 million people and criticism from opposition leaders.

Chavez's allies have openly discussed the possibility that he may not be able to return to Venezuela to be inaugurated for his third six-year term as president on the constitutionally mandated date of January 10.

Senior "Chavista" officials have said the people's wishes were made clear when the president was re-elected in October, and that the constitution makes no provision for what happens if a president-elect cannot take office on January 10.

Opposition leaders say any postponement would be just the latest sign that Chavez is not in a fit state to govern and that new elections should be called to choose his replacement. If Chavez had to step down, new elections would be called within 30 days.

Opposition figures believe they have a better shot against Maduro, who was named earlier this month by Chavez as his heir apparent, than against the charismatic president who for 14 years has been nearly invincible at the ballot box.

Any constitutional dispute over succession could lead to a messy transition toward a post-Chavez era in the country that boasts the biggest oil reserves in the world.

Maduro has become the face of the government in Chavez's absence, imitating the president's bombastic style and sharp criticism of the United States and its "imperialist" policies.

In Sunday's broadcast, Maduro said Chavez sent New Year greetings to all Venezuelans, "especially the children, whom he carries in his heart always."

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago and Mario Naranjo; Editng by Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)

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India's trauma turns to anger at gang-rape killing

NEW DELHI: Horror at a deadly gang-rape that appalled India has turned to anger in New Delhi, where a leaden-footed government is accused of being out of touch and out of ideas in handling its latest crisis.

On Sunday evening, as dusk descended on an area of the Indian capital where protesters have assembled daily since the December 16 rape of a 23-year-old medical student, a group ran through the crowd with an effigy.

It depicted Sheila Dikshit, the 74-year-old chief minister of New Delhi blamed by many for failing to prevent Delhi becoming known as India's "rape capital".

The victim was repeatedly raped and violated with an iron bar on a bus before being thrown off the moving vehicle. She suffered horrific injuries and died on Saturday.

"Tomorrow it could be my sister or me," Soumya Tandon, a 26-year-old marketing executive, told AFP. "I take a bus from near my office and every day my mother is worried if I will reach home safely. Why should we live in constant fear?"

Under the watchful eye of hundreds of riot police, Dikshit's effigy was burnt to cheers, underlining the ugly mood among young urban voters who are increasingly vocal in denouncing their leaders as too old and too complacent.

"We are the future of this nation, they need to connect with us," said 32-year-old Mayuri Goswami, a chartered accountant carrying a banner that read "Time to engage, not disconnect. Wake up, leaders".

"They need to involve us more, try and understand our emotions and anger," he said.

Dikshit, who once said a female journalist murdered in Delhi should not have been so "adventurous" as to be out on her own late at night, is not the only target amid a chorus of calls for change.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an 80-year-old former academic who struggles to connect with voters, called for "dispassionate debate" in a brief statement after the woman's death as the nation was consumed by grief.

As politicians of all stripes struggled to measure the mood and find the right language, the Minister for Women Krishna Tirath failed to make herself heard.

Heavy-handed policing and insensitive comments only stirred more anger.

The president's son, Abhjit Mukherjee, called the protesters "painted ladies", while others blamed provocative clothing and suggested withdrawing skirts at school to curb harassment.

Another protester's poster took aim at Rahul Gandhi, the 41-year-old "youth leader" of the ruling Congress party who is expected to be a prime ministerial candidate in 2014 national elections.

The aloof Oxford graduate -- the latest in the Gandhi political dynasty -- has made few public comments on the crime, which brought simmering anger over widespread abuse of women to boiling point.

"I am not Rahul Gandhi. I have guts to save my sisters," read one banner.

Commentary on the victim's ordeal has tended to place the assault at the centre of forces churning up one of the world's most diverse countries.

Economic growth of nearly 10 percent over the last decade has led to hectic urbanisation that has brought changed moral codes and lifestyles, a more global outlook and globalised trends, as well as simmering class and gender tensions.

Many reasons have been posited for the assault, a commonplace crime in India. A recent poll found it to be the worst in the G20 group of nations for women because of infanticide, child marriage and abuse.

Analysis has focused on India's deeply patriarchal society, in which misogyny runs deep and women are at best second-class citizens and at worst mere objects to be owned, enjoyed or abused by men.

But did the country's gender imbalance as a result of female foeticide play a role? And what about frustration among young Indians in an increasingly sexualised society?

"In our attitudes to sex, we are midway between the liberal democracies of the West and fundamentalist Islamic societies," wrote Palash Krishna Mehrotra, author of "The Butterfly Generation", this week.

In the "old versus new" narrative, most analysts agree that the scandal highlighted the growing battle line between young middle-class urban India -- the future of the country -- and a government still run by men of pensionable age.

Madhuresh Kumar of the non-profit National Alliance of People's Movement, says the protesters represent a new kind of movement which is urban and rooted in globalised, aspirational India.

"This class was till now complacent in its material prosperity," Kumar told AFP.

The millions who protested last year, when anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare ignited a national campaign against graft, had a similar profile.

Then as now, a political class seen as unable or unwilling to improve India was widely pilloried as failing to respond to a young population yearning for wealth and security.

- AFP/al

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Rights group announces reward of $10,000 for identification of each rapist of November 1984 massacre

JALANDHAR: As there is strong anger in the country against the rape and rapists, Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), an international human rights group advocating justice for the victims of November 1984, while showing solidarity and sending its "deepest condolences" to the family of the Delhi gang rape victim, questioned the silence of the Indian administration, politicians and the justice system over the rape of Sikh women in broad daylight during first week of November 1984.

The NGO has announced a reward of $10,000 for the identification and prosecution of those who raped Sikh women during November 1984. "The reward of $10,000 will be given to the witnesses who come forward with the identification of rapist and their prosecution," said SFJ legal advisor Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in a statement issued on Monday.

While sharing the pain with Delhi gang rape victims for the loss of their daughter who was gang raped in a Delhi Transport Bus, Rights group held that it was an irony that public transport buses were then used to transport death squads that raped Sikh women in broad day light during November 1984 massacre of Sikhs. "Successive governments have not only given impunity to those who perpetrated violent crime of rape against Sikh women but also have rewarded those with official positions," SFJ said.

While responding to Sonia Gandhi's, statement that "As a woman, and mother, I understand how protesters feel," "Today we pledge that the victim will get justice,"?, SFJ asked her stand on the plight of the victims of 1984.

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