Danny Puff

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell for a fifth straight day on Friday, dropping 1 percent and marking the S&P 500's longest losing streak in three months as the federal government edged closer to the "fiscal cliff" with no solution in sight.

President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders met at the White House to work on a solution for the draconian debt-reduction measures set to take effect beginning next week. Stocks, which have been influenced by little else than the flood of fiscal cliff headlines from Washington in recent days, extended losses going into the close with the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 each losing 1 percent, after reports that Obama would not offer a new plan to Republicans. The Dow closed below 13,000 for the first time since December 4.

"I was stunned Obama didn't have another plan, and that's absolutely why we sold off," said Mike Shea, managing partner at Direct Access Partners LLC in New York. "He's going to force the House to come to him with something different. I think that's a surprise. The entire market is disappointed in a lack of leadership in Washington."

In a sign of investor anxiety, the CBOE Volatility Index , known as the VIX, jumped 16.69 percent to 22.72, closing at its highest level since June. Wall Street's favorite fear barometer has risen for five straight weeks, surging more than 40 percent over that time.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 158.20 points, or 1.21 percent, to 12,938.11 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 15.67 points, or 1.11 percent, to 1,402.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 25.59 points, or 0.86 percent, to end at 2,960.31.

For the week, the Dow fell 1.9 percent. The S&P 500 also lost 1.9 percent for the week, marking its worst weekly performance since mid-November. The Nasdaq finished the week down 2 percent. In contrast, the VIX jumped 22 percent for the week.

Pessimism continued after the market closed, with stock futures indicating even steeper losses. S&P 500 futures dropped 26.7 points, or 1.9 percent, eclipsing the decline seen in the regular session.

All 10 S&P 500 sectors fell during Friday's regular trading, with most posting declines of 1 percent, but energy and material shares were among the weakest of the day, with both groups closely tied to the pace of growth.

An S&P energy sector index slid 1.8 percent, with Exxon Mobil down 2 percent at $85.10, and Chevron Corp off 1.9 percent at $106.45. The S&P material sector index fell 1.3 percent, with U.S. Steel Corp down 2.6 percent at $23.03.

Decliners outnumbered advancers by a ratio of slightly more than 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, while on the Nasdaq, two stocks fell for every one that rose.

"We've been whipsawing around on low volume and rumors that come out on the cliff," said Eric Green, senior portfolio manager at Penn Capital Management in Philadelphia, who helps oversee $7 billion in assets.

With time running short, lawmakers may opt to allow the higher taxes and across-the-board federal spending cuts to go into effect and attempt to pass a retroactive fix soon after the new year. Standard & Poor's said an impasse on the cliff wouldn't affect the sovereign credit rating of the United States.

"We're not as concerned with January 1 as the market seems to be," said Richard Weiss, senior money manager at American Century Investments, in Mountain View, California. "Things will be resolved, just maybe not on a good timetable, and any deal can easily be retroactive."

Trading volume was light throughout the holiday-shortened week, with just 4.46 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT on Friday, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares. On Monday, the U.S. stock market closed early for Christmas Eve, and the market was shut on Tuesday for Christmas. Many senior traders were absent this week for the holidays.

Highlighting Wall Street's sensitivity to developments in Washington, stocks tumbled more than 1 percent on Thursday after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned that a deal was unlikely before the deadline. But late in the day, stocks nearly bounced back when the House said it would hold an unusual Sunday session to work on a fiscal solution.

Positive economic data failed to alter the market's mood.

The National Association of Realtors said contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose in November to their highest level in 2-1/2 years, while a report from the Institute for Supply Management-Chicago showed business activity in the U.S. Midwest expanded in December.

"Economic reports have been very favorable, and once Congress comes to a resolution, the market should resume an upward trend, based on the data," said Weiss, who helps oversee about $125 billion in assets. "All else being equal, we see any further decline as a buying opportunity."

Barnes & Noble Inc rose 4.3 percent to $14.97 after the top U.S. bookstore chain said British publisher Pearson Plc had agreed to make a strategic investment in its Nook Media subsidiary. But Barnes & Noble also said its Nook business will not meet its previous projection for fiscal year 2013.

Shares of magicJack VocalTec Ltd jumped 10.3 percent to $17.95 after the company gave a strong fourth-quarter outlook and named Gerald Vento president and chief executive, effective January 1.

The U.S.-listed shares of Canadian drugmaker Aeterna Zentaris Inc surged 13.8 percent to $2.47 after the company said it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on a special protocol assessment by the FDA for a Phase 3 registration trial in endometrial cancer with AEZS-108 treatment.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A suburban New York newspaper that sparked an uproar among gun enthusiasts by publishing names and addresses of residents holding pistol permits is now planning to publish even more identities of permit-toting locals.

Further names and addresses will be added as they become available to a map originally published on December 24 in the White Plains, New York-based Journal News, the newspaper said.

The original map listed thousands of pistol permit holders in suburban Westchester and Rockland counties just north of New York City.

Along with an article entitled "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood," the map was compiled in response to the December 14 shooting deaths of 26 children and adults in Newtown, Connecticut, editors of the Gannett Corp.-owned newspaper said.

The next batch of names will be permit holders in suburban Putnam County, New York, where the county clerk told the newspaper it is still compiling information.

Some 44,000 people are licensed to own pistols in the three counties, the newspaper said. Owners of rifles and shotguns do not need permits, the newspaper said.

The publication prompted outrage, particularly on social media sites, among gun owners.

"Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves?" Rob Seubert of Silver Spring, Maryland, posted on the newspaper's web site. "What a bunch of liberal boobs you all are."

Republican state Senator Greg Ball of Patterson, New York, said he planned to introduce legislation to keep permit information private except to prosecutors and police.

A similar bill that he introduced earlier as an Assemblyman failed in the state Assembly.

"The asinine editors at the Journal News have once again gone out of their way to place a virtual scarlet letter on law abiding firearm owners throughout the region," Ball wrote on his Senate web site.

The newspaper's editor and vice president of news, CynDee Royle, earlier in the week defended the decision to list the permit holders.

"We knew publication of the database would be controversial, but we felt sharing as much information as we could about gun ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings," she said.

Some critics retaliated by posting reporters' and editors' addresses and other personal information online.

Howard Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, called the critics' response childish and petulant.

"It doesn't move the issue of gun control to the level of intelligent public discussion," he said. "Instead, it transforms what should be a rational public debate on a contentious issue into ugly gutter fighting."

Good said the information about permit holders was public and, if presented in context, served a legitimate interest.

But media critic Al Tompkins of the Florida-based Poynter Institute wrote online this week that the newspaper's reporting had not gone far enough to justify the permit holders' loss of privacy.

"If journalists could show flaws in the gun permitting system, that would be newsworthy," he said. "Or, for example, if gun owners were exempted from permits because of political connections, then journalists could better justify the privacy invasion."

Tompkins said he feared the dispute might prompt lawmakers to play to privacy fears.

"The net effect of the abuse of public records from all sides may well be a public distaste for opening records, which would be the biggest mistake of all," he said.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by David Gregorio)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Patrick Dempsey says he wants to rescue a coffee house chain and more than 500 jobs.

The "Grey's Anatomy" star said Wednesday he's leading a group attempting to buy Tully's Coffee. The Seattle-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October.

Dempsey said he's excited about the chance to help hundreds of workers and give back to Seattle.

The actor has a strong TV tie to the city: He plays Dr. Derek Shepherd on "Grey's Anatomy," the ABC drama set at fictional Seattle Grace Hospital.

Tully's has 47 company-run stores in Washington and California, as well as five franchised stores and 58 licensed locations in the U.S.

Any sale would have to be approved by a judge. A bankruptcy court hearing is set for Jan. 11 in Seattle.

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The following list represents the most viral tracks on Spotify, based on the number of people who shared it divided by the number who listened to it, from Monday, Dec. 17, to Sunday, Dec. 23, via Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Spotify.

UNITED STATES

1. R.E.M., "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" (Capitol Records)

2. Fort Atlantic, "Let Your Heart Hold Fast" (Dualtone)

3. Tamar Braxton, "Love and War" (Universal Republic)

4. The Neighbourhood, "Sweater Weather" (SME/the (r)evolve group)

5. Ra Ra Riot, "When I Dream" (Barsuk Records)

6. Lifehouse, "Between the Raindrops" (Geffen Records)

7. Christina Aguilera, "Just a Fool" (RCA Records)

8. In This Moment, "Blood" (Century Media)

9. The Killers, "Here With Me" (Island Def Jam)

10. Chief Keef, "Hate Bein' Sober" (Interscope Records)

UNITED KINGDOM

1. R.E.M., "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" (Capitol Records)

2. >1 Fish Man, "One Pound Fish - Market Version" (Karman Entertainment)

3. Howard Shore, "Misty Mountains" (WaterTower Music)

4. Black Veil Brides, "In the End" (Universal Republic)

5. Kavinsky, "Protovision" (Record Makers)

6. Alex Winston, "Velvet Elvis" (V2 Records)

7. My Chemical Romance, "The World Is Ugly" (Reprise Records)

8. Bob Dylan, "It Must Be Santa" (Sony Music)

9. Metallica, "Nothing Else Matters" (Blackened Recordings)

10. Tom Odell, "Another Love" (Sony Music)

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LONDON (Reuters) - Mike Lynch, the founder of the software firm sold to Hewlett-Packard last year in a deal tainted by accusations of accounting fraud, said he would defend the company's accounts to U.S. Federal investigators.

HP confirmed in a filing late on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating Autonomy's books.

The PC and printer maker bought the British company for $11 billion last year to lead its push into the more profitable software sector.

Autonomy did not deliver the growth expected, resulting in Lynch's departure earlier this year.

But worse was to come last month when HP wrote off some $5 billion of the company's value and accused its former management of accounting improprieties that inflated its value.

The Silicon Valley company said it had passed information from a whistleblower to the U.S. Department of Justice, the SEC and Britain's Serious Fraud Office.

"On November 21, 2012, representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice advised HP that they had opened an investigation relating to Autonomy," it said in the filing.

"HP is cooperating with the three investigating agencies."

Lynch launched a robust defense of his track record almost immediately after HP made the accusations.

He said on Friday that he was still waiting for a detailed calculation of HP's $5 billion writedown of Autonomy's value and a published explanation of the allegations.

"Simply put these allegations are false, and in the absence of further detail we cannot understand what HP believes to be the basis for them," he said in a statement.

"We continue to reject these allegations in the strongest possible terms. Autonomy's financial accounts were properly maintained in accordance with applicable regulations, fully audited by Deloitte and available to HP during the due diligence process."

Lynch said he had not been approached by any regulatory authority, but he would co-operate with any investigation and looked forward to the opportunity to explain his position.

HP has refused to concede to Lynch's demands for more information about the allegations.

"While Dr. Lynch is eager for a debate, we believe the legal process is the correct method in which to bring out the facts and take action on behalf of our shareholders," it said in response to an open letter from Lynch last month

"In that setting, we look forward to hearing Dr. Lynch and other former Autonomy employees answer questions under penalty of perjury."

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge has reaffirmed his decision to dismiss a lawsuit accusing actor Sylvester Stallone of copying someone else's screenplay to make his popular 2010 movie "The Expendables."

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan on Thursday rejected claims of copyright infringement damages by Marcus Webb, who contended that the movie's screenplay contained 20 "striking similarities" to his own "The Cordoba Caper."

Webb claimed that both works had similar plots, and involved hired mercenaries in a Latin American country that was home to a villain dictator named General Garza.

But Rakoff said no reasonable juror could find that the works were so similar as to eliminate the possibility that Stallone crafted his screenplay on his own.

Not even the general's name was an automatic red flag, Rakoff said, writing that "Garza" was the 34th most common Hispanic nickname in the United States.

"The court has carefully examined the entire litany of plaintiff's proffered 'striking similarities' and finds none of them remotely striking or legally sufficient," Rakoff wrote. "These are two very different screenplays built on a familiar theme: mercenaries taking on a Latin American dictator."

Other defendants in the case included Nu Image Films, which produced the movie, and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, which distributed the movie in the United States.

Lawyers for Webb did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"The Expendables" was released in August 2010, and featured other older action stars like Jet Li and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A sequel, "The Expendables 2," was released in August 2012.

In June, Rakoff decided to dismiss Webb's case [ID:nL2E8HQA93] but did not provide his reasons until Thursday.

Stallone also starred in the "Rocky" and "Rambo" movies.

The case is Webb v. Stallone et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-07517.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The Indian gang-rape victim whose assault in New Delhi triggered nationwide protests died in hospital on Saturday of injuries suffered in the attack, a Singapore hospital treating her said.

The death of the 23-year-old medical student could spawn new protests and possibly fresh confrontations with the police, especially in the Indian capital, which has been the focus of the demonstrations.

"We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4:45 a.m. on Dec 29, 2012 (15:45 a.m. ET Friday). Her family and officials from the High Commission of India were by her side," Mount Elizabeth Hospital Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Loh said in a statement.

The woman, who was severely beaten, raped and thrown out of a moving bus in New Delhi, was flown to Singapore by the Indian government on Wednesday for specialist treatment.

Most rapes and other sex crimes in India go unreported and offenders are rarely punished, women's rights activists say. But the brutality of the assault on December 16 triggered public outrage and demands for better policing and harsher punishment for rapists.

The case has received blanket coverage on cable television news channels. The woman has not been identified but some Indian media have called her "Amanat", an Urdu word meaning "treasure".

Earlier on Friday, the hospital had reported that the young woman's condition had taken a turn for the worse. It said that her family had been informed and were by her side.

T.C.A. Raghavan, the Indian High Commissioner to Singapore, said after her death that the family has expressed a desire for her body to be flown back to India.

At a briefing earlier on Saturday, Raghavan declined to comment on reports in India accusing the government of sending her to Singapore to minimize the possible backlash in the event of her death.

Some Indian medical experts had questioned the decision to airlift the woman to Singapore, calling it a risky maneuver given the seriousness of her injuries. They had said she was already receiving the best possible care in India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government has been battling criticism that it was tone-deaf to the outcry and heavy-handed in its response to the protests in the Indian capital.

"It is deeply saddening and just beyond words. The police and government definitely have to do something more," said Sharanya Ramachandran, an Indian national who is working as an engineer in Singapore.

"They should bring in very severe punishment for such cases. They should start recognizing that it is a big crime."

"SIGNIFICANT BRAIN INJURY"

The Singapore hospital said earlier that the woman had suffered "significant brain injury" and was surviving against the odds. She had already undergone three abdominal operations before being flown to Singapore.

Demonstrations over the lack of safety for women erupted across India after the attack, culminating last weekend in pitched battles between police and protesters in the heart of New Delhi.

New Delhi has been on edge since the weekend clashes. Hundreds of policemen have been deployed on the streets of the capital and streets leading to the main protest site, the India Gate war memorial, have been shut for long periods, causing commuter chaos in the city of 16 million.

Political commentators and sociologists say the rape has tapped into a deep well of frustration that many Indians feel over what they see as weak governance and poor leadership on social and economic issues.

Many protesters have complained that Singh's government has done little to curb the abuse of women in the country of 1.2 billion. A global poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in June found that India was the worst place to be a woman because of high rates of infanticide, child marriage and slavery.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures. Government data show the number of reported rape cases in the country rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011.

(Reporting by Eveline Danubrata and Kevin Lim; Writing by Kevin Lim in Singapore and Ross Colvin in New Delhi; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a sharp contrast between two of the nation's largest cities, Chicago recorded its 499th murder of 2012 on Thursday night while New York reported 414 murders as of Friday even though it has more than three times the population, according to police.

Plagued by gang violence, Chicago surpassed last year's murder total of 433 in October and is set for the highest rate of homicide since the third largest U.S. city recorded 512 in 2008. The number is likely to top 500 on the last weekend of the year.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Friday that the nation's largest city could finish the year with the lowest number of murders and shootings since 1963, when it began keeping comparable data. The number of murders this year in New York is only about one-fifth the total of 2,245 homicides recorded in the peak year of 1990.

CHICAGO LEADERS FRUSTRATED

The rising murder rate has frustrated Chicago Police Commissioner Garry McCarthy and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who promised to make the city's streets safer when he took office in May 2011.

"It's unacceptable," McCarthy said in an interview with Reuters on Friday.

New York's Bloomberg trumpeted the news with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly at a police recruit graduation ceremony in the borough of Brooklyn.

Kelly attributed the decline to the increasing use of stop-and-frisk tactics, when police can stop and search people on the street they consider suspicious.

"We're preventing crimes before someone is killed and before someone else has to go to prison for murder or other serious crimes," Kelly said in a statement.

Civil rights groups and some local politicians have criticized stop-and-frisk tactics, saying that most people stopped turn out to be innocent, and they unfairly target black and Latino men. The practice is the subject of a federal court case over whether it is unconstitutional.

New York has also spent $185 million to settle lawsuits filed against the police during the fiscal year 2011. A total of 8,882 suits were filed against the NYPD, a 10 percent increase from the prior year, according to a report by the city's comptroller's office.

MOST VICTIMS AFRICAN-AMERICAN

Chicago's McCarthy said the city's high murder rate, up 18 percent over last year as of December 16, was due to gang violence. Eighty percent of the homicides were gang-related and 80 percent of the victims were African-Americans, he said.

Blacks make up about 33 percent of the city's population, according to the 2011 estimate from the U.S. Census.

In August, six people were murdered in the city on a single weekend day, the highest one-day death toll of 2012.

McCarthy and other officials blame the surge on a splintering of the city's traditional gangs and the rise of new cliques and factions that are vying, often violently, for control of turf on the city's south and west sides.

The spike in homicides was especially dramatic in the first quarter of the year, when murders jumped 66 percent. So far in the fourth quarter, McCarthy said, the murder rate is down 15 percent compared with the same period last year. Police have arrested 7,000 more gang members this year than in 2011, he said.

"We're doing what we can do and it's working," McCarthy said.

After mounting criticism of Emanuel and McCarthy earlier this year, the police chief announced a shakeup of his department, transferring some police managers among districts to bolster the battle against gangs.

McCarthy said Chicago faces a larger illicit gun problem than either New York or Los Angeles, the second-largest U.S. city.

"In the first six months of the year, we seized three guns for every gun seized in Los Angeles and nine guns for every gun confiscated by the New York Police Department," McCarthy said.

"When people ask me, 'What's different about Chicago?' that's one of the things I tell them. We have a proliferation of illegal firearms," he said.

Illinois does not ban assault weapons and the high-capacity magazines that increase their killing potential, as do New York and California. Emanuel has called for tougher gun controls in the aftermath of the recent Connecticut school shooting.

STEALING APPLE IPHONES

While Chicago's murder rate was up, most other categories of crime were down this year from 2011, including criminal sexual assault, robbery, motor vehicle theft and burglary, according to police statistics.

In New York, the number of rapes, robberies, felony assaults and burglaries increased between 1 and 3.4 percent compared to 2011, according to police statistics as of earlier this month. Grand larceny increased by 9 percent, which police said was because of thefts of expensive Apple products such as iPhones and iPads.

Chicago was not alone in recording a spike in murders this year. The murder rate in Detroit through December 16 was up more than 12 percent over 2011 and at the highest level in nearly two decades, according to the city's police department.

As of Friday, St. Louis had recorded 113 homicides, the same number as 2011 with one weekend to go in 2012, police spokesman David Marzullo said. Across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis, Illinois, 22 murders have been recorded this year in a town of only 27,000 people.

"The numbers just blow you away for a community as small as East St. Louis," said Brendan Kelly, state's attorney for St. Clair County, whose jurisdiction includes East St. Louis.

The East St. Louis murder rate is actually down from 30 in 2011 because of targeted patrolling of crime hot spots, Kelly said.

(Additional reporting by Tim Bross in St. Louis; Editing by Greg McCune and Leslie Gevirtz)

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A Chinese court has fined Apple Inc 1 million yuan ($160,400) for hosting third-party applications on its App Store that were selling pirated electronic books, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

Apple is to pay compensation to eight Chinese writers and two companies for violating their copyrights, the Beijing No.2 Intermediate People's Court ruled on Thursday, Xinhua said.

Earlier in the year, a group of Chinese authors filed the suit against Apple, saying an unidentified number of apps on its App Store sold unlicensed copies of their books. The group of eight authors was seeking 10 million yuan in damages.

"We are disappointed at the judgment. Some of our best-selling authors only got 7,000 yuan. The judgment is a signal of encouraging piracy," Bei Zhicheng, a spokesman for the group, told Reuters.

Apple said in a statement that it takes copyright infringement complaints "very seriously".

"We're always updating our service to better assist content owners in protecting their rights," Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said.

China has the world's largest Internet and mobile market by number of users, but piracy costs software companies billions of dollars each year.

Apple, whose products enjoy great popularity in China, has faced a string of legal headaches this year. In July, Apple paid 60 million yuan to a Chinese firm, Proview Technology, to settle a long-running lawsuit over the iPad trademark in China.

($1 = 6.2360 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom and Melanie Lee; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Matt Driskill)

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SINGAPORE (AP) A young Indian woman who was gang-raped and severely beaten on a bus died Saturday at a Singapore hospital, after her horrific ordeal galvanized Indians to demand greater protection for women from sexual violence that impacts thousands of them every day.

She "passed away peacefully" with her family and officials of the Indian embassy by her side," said Dr. Kevin Loh, the chief executive of Mount Elizabeth hospital where she had been treated since Thursday. "The Mount Elizabeth Hospital team of doctors, nurses and staff join her family in mourning her loss," he said in a statement.

He said the woman had remained in an extremely critical condition since Thursday when she was flown to Singapore from India. "Despite all efforts by a team of eight specialists in Mount Elizabeth Hospital to keep her stable, her condition continued to deteriorate over these two days. She had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome."

The woman and a male friend, who have not been identified, were traveling in a public bus in the Indian capital, New Delhi, after watching a film on the evening of Dec. 16 when they were attacked by six men who raped her. They also beat the couple and inserted an iron rod into her body resulting in severe organ damage. Both of them were then stripped and thrown off the bus, according to police.

Indian police have arrested six people in connection with the attack, which left the victim with severe internal injuries, a lung infection and brain damage. She also suffered from a heart attack while in hospital in India.

Indian High Commissioner, or ambassador, T.C.A. Raghanvan told reporters that the scale of the injuries she suffered was "very grave" and in the end it "proved too much.

He said arrangements are being made to take her body back to India.

The frightening nature of the crime shocked Indians, who have come out in their thousands for almost daily demonstrations, demanding stronger protection for women and death penalty for rape, which is now punishable by a maximum life imprisonment. Women face daily harassment across India, ranging from catcalls on the streets, groping and touching in public transport to rape.

But the tragedy has forced India to confront the reality that sexually assaulted women are often blamed for the crime, which forces them to keep quiet and not report it to authorities for fear of exposing their families to ridicule. Also, police often refuse to accept complaints from those who are courageous enough to report the rapes and the rare prosecutions that reach courts drag on for years.

After 10 days at a New Delhi hospital, the victim was brought to the Mount Elizabeth hospital, which specializes in multi-organ transplant. But by late Friday, the young woman's condition had "taken a turn for the worse" and her vital signs had deteriorated. It was clear then that she would not survive long.

Indian attitudes toward rape are so entrenched that even politicians and opinion makers have often suggested that women should not go out at night or wear clothes that might be seen provocative.

Other politicians have come under fire for comments insulting the protesters and diminishing the crime.

On Friday, Abhijit Mukherjee, a national lawmaker and the son of India's president, apologized for calling the protesters "highly dented and painted" women, who go from discos to demonstrations.

"I tender my unconditional apology to all the people whose sentiments got hurt," he told NDTV news.

Separately, authorities in Punjab took action Thursday when an 18-year-old woman killed herself by drinking poison a month after she told police she was gang-raped.

State authorities suspended one police officer and fired two others on accusations they delayed investigating and taking action in the case. The three accused in the rape were only arrested Thursday night, a month after the crime was reported.

"This is a very sensitive crime, I have taken it very seriously," said Paramjit Singh Gill, a top police officer in the city of Patiala.

The Press Trust of India reported that the woman was raped Nov. 13 and reported the attack to police Nov. 27. But police harassed the girl, asked her embarrassing questions and took no action against the accused, PTI reported, citing police sources.

Authorities in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh also suspended a police officer on accusations he refused to register a rape complaint from a woman who said she had been attacked by a driver.

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Associated Press writer Faris Mokhtar and Ravi Nessman in New Delhi contributed to this report.

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