Syria regime firing Scud-style missiles: NATO

DAMASCUS: NATO has accused the Syrian regime of firing Scud-style missiles at rebels, amid Russian criticism that the West's "dangerous" stance risks bringing chaos to the country and beyond.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Friday called the Syrian army's use of missiles against rebels an act of desperation.

"I can confirm that we have detected the launch of Scud-type missiles; we strongly regret that act," Rasmussen said. "I consider it an act of a desperate regime approaching collapse."

The latest launches were detected on Thursday, a source close to NATO said, and that was corroborated by an activist in the rebel-held town of Marea in the northern province of Aleppo.

Abu Hisham told AFP he had been awakened to "the sound of a very loud explosion. It was raining heavily and there were many clouds, so we knew it was unlikely to be aerial bombardment."

"The first missile fell outside Marea. Had it hit the town it would have caused a massacre. The second, my friends told me, fell outside (the nearby town of) Tel Refaat."

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday denounced the West's "dangerous" stance in support of Syrian rebels seeking to unseat President Bashar al-Assad.

"Our Western colleagues have started dividing terrorists into 'bad' and 'acceptable'. That is very dangerous," he said in an interview with the English-language Russia Today channel.

Lavrov reiterated Moscow's position that the Syrian people should be allowed to decide their own destiny without outside agencies seeking to help oust the regime.

"We are not in the business of regime change," he insisted.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow, one of the last supporters of the Assad regime, wanted to avoid "chaos" in Syria, calling for political talks between all parties to take the war-torn country towards a democratic regime.

"We are interested in this because this is all very close to our borders. We really would not like to see any potential changes in Syria to lead to the chaos we are witnessing in other countries of the region," Putin stressed after an EU-Russia summit in Brussels.

For the second time in two days, Putin denied propping up Assad's regime and appeared to acknowledge the possibility of change, saying: "We do not advocate the government of Syria."

In Damascus, Palestinian refugees streamed back to the Yarmuk camp after a reported deal to keep it out of the conflict, following fierce clashes earlier this week and briefly on Friday.

An AFP correspondent heard sporadic shooting, and a main road was blocked with boulders to keep out cars, although a van full of passengers still entered through a side street.

The fighting forced about 100,000 of Yarmuk's 150,000-strong population to flee, with many taking refuge in Damascus parks and squares, said the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees.

Hours after they returned on Friday, fighting again flared in the camp for about an hour and a half, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"The fighting pitted anti-regime Syrian and Palestinian rebels against members of the pro-regime popular committees," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

The clashes were between fighters who had not withdrawn from Yarmuk despite a reported agreement after talks that began on Wednesday aimed at removing both rebel and government fighters from the camp.

Newspapers in neighbouring Lebanon said an agreement had been reached under the auspices of Mokhtar Lamani, the representative of UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

The UN's World Food Programme said it was to start providing food to 125,000 "vulnerable Palestinians and displaced Syrians" in and around Yarmuk.

Elsewhere, violence raged in flashpoints across Syria, with the Britain-based monitor saying at least 82 people were killed. And a rebel attack on an electricity pylon caused a power outage in several areas of Damascus, state television said.

Despite the violence, protesters took to the streets in several anti-regime areas, renewing calls for the fall of Assad's regime, it said.

Last week, a former Syrian officer said regime forces had fired Scuds, despite the government denials.

Former first lieutenant Aaraba Idriss, who defected 10 months ago and has joined the rebels, said serving officers told him the army fired "Golan-1" missiles, either Russian-made or Russian modified," with a range of up to 300 kilometres (180 miles).

- AFP/al

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HC vacates stay on results for 14,000 new PGT posts

CHANDIGARH: While vacating the stay on the announcement of results for around 14,000 new posts of Post Graduate Teachers (PGTs), the Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday held that only those who clear the Haryana Teachers Eligibility Test (HTET) would be eligible for teaching posts in Haryana.

With these orders, candidates having qualified the eligibility test of state, other than Haryana or Central Teachers Eligibility Test (CTET), will not be eligible for these teaching posts in the state.

A division bench headed by chief justice A K Sikri also upheld the condition of Haryana School Teachers Selection Board (HSTSB) that all candidates with four years of teaching experience are eligible for appointments if they qualify HTET before 2015.

The bench passed these orders while dismissing a petition filed by some HTET qualified candidates, who had sought directions to quash the selection criteria which allowed candidates, who have not qualified HTET but are working in any recognized school for the last four years, to become eligible for these posts.

In June this year, Haryana had advertised around 14,000 posts of PGTs in which the government had given relaxation to those candidates from qualifying HTET having teaching experience of four years.

The petitioners had contended that the government was exempting the candidates from HTET just to accommodate the guest teachers working in various schools of the state for last so many years.

Acting on their petition, the HC had restrained HSTSB from declaring the final result of selection in August this year.

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Pictures: Fungi Get Into the Holiday Spirit

Photograph courtesy Stephanie Mounaud, J. Craig Venter Institute

Mounaud combined different fungi to create a Santa hat and spell out a holiday message.

Different fungal grow at different rates, so Mounaud's artwork rarely lasts for long. There's only a short window of time when they actually look like what they're suppose to.

"You do have to keep that in perspective when you're making these creations," she said.

For example, the A. flavus fungi that she used to write this message from Santa grows very quickly. "The next day, after looking at this plate, it didn't say 'Ho Ho Ho.' It said 'blah blah blah,'" Mounaud said.

The message also eventually turned green, which was the color she was initially after. "It was a really nice green, which is what I was hoping for. But yellow will do," she said.

The hat was particularly challenging. The fungus used to create it "was troubling because at different temperatures it grows differently. The pigment in this one forms at room temperature but this type of growth needed higher temperatures," Mounaud said.

Not all fungus will grow nicely together. For example, in the hat, "N. fischeri [the brim and ball] did not want to play nice with the P. marneffei [red part of hat] ... so they remained slightly separated."

Published December 21, 2012

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Obama Still an 'Optimist' on Cliff Deal

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON D.C. – Ten days remain before the mandatory spending cuts and tax increases known as the “fiscal cliff” take effect, but President Obama said he is still a “hopeless optimist” that a federal budget deal can be reached before the year-end deadline that economists agree might plunge the country back into recession.

“Even though Democrats and Republicans are arguing about whether those rates should go up for the wealthiest individuals, all of us – every single one of us -agrees that tax rates shouldn’t go up for the other 98 percent of Americans, which includes 97 percent of small businesses,” he said.

He added that there was “no reason” not to move forward on that aspect, and that it was “within our capacity” to resolve.

The question of whether to raise taxes on incomes over $250,000 remains at an impasse, but is only one element of nuanced legislative wrangling that has left the parties at odds.

For ABC News’ breakdown of the rhetoric versus the reality, click here.

At the White House news conference this evening, the president confirmed he had spoken today to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, although no details of the conversations were disclosed.

The talks came the same day Speaker Boehner admitted “God only knows” the solution to the gridlock, and a day after mounting pressure from within his own Republican Party forced him to pull his alternative proposal from a prospective House vote. That proposal, ”Plan B,” called for extending current tax rates for Americans making up to $1 million a year, a far wealthier threshold than Democrats have advocated.

Boehner acknowledged that even the conservative-leaning “Plan B” did not have the support necessary to pass in the Republican-dominated House, leaving a resolution to the fiscal cliff in doubt.

“In the next few days, I’ve asked leaders of Congress to work towards a package that prevents a tax hike on middle-class Americans, protects unemployment insurance for 2 million Americans, and lays the groundwork for further work on both growth and deficit reduction,” Obama said. ”That’s an achievable goal.  That can get done in 10 days.”

Complicating matters: The halls of Congress are silent tonight. The House of Representatives began its holiday recess Thursday and Senate followed this evening.

Meanwhile, the president has his own vacation to contend with. Tonight, he was embarking for Hawaii and what is typically several weeks of Christmas vacation.

However, during the press conference the president said he would see his congressional colleagues “next week” to continue negotiations, leaving uncertain how long Obama plans to remain in the Aloha State.

The president said he hoped the time off would give leaders “some perspective.”

“Everybody can cool off; everybody can drink some eggnog, have some Christmas cookies, sing some Christmas carols, enjoy the company of loved ones,” he said. “And then I’d ask every member of Congress, while they’re back home, to think about that.  Think about the obligations we have to the people who sent us here.

“This is not simply a contest between parties in terms of who looks good and who doesn’t,” he added later. “There are real-world consequences to what we do here.”

Obama concluded by reiterating that neither side could walk away with “100 percent” of its demands, and that it negotiations couldn’t remain “a contest between parties in terms of who looks good and who doesn’t.”

Boehner’s office reacted quickly to the remarks, continuing recent Republican statements that presidential leadership was at fault for the ongoing gridlock.

“Though the president has failed to offer any solution that passes the test of balance, we remain hopeful he is finally ready to get serious about averting the fiscal cliff,” Boehner said. “The House has already acted to stop all of the looming tax hikes and replace the automatic defense cuts. It is time for the Democratic-run Senate to act, and that is what the speaker told the president tonight.”

The speaker’s office said Boehner “will return to Washington following the holiday, ready to find a solution that can pass both houses of Congress.”

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How Boehner’s Plan B for the ‘fiscal cliff’ began and fell apart

John A. Boehner’s week on the brink ended in a painfully familiar place.

It began last week when President Obama delivered a stern message to the House speaker: If there was going to be a deal to tame the nation’s debt, it had to happen now. If they went over the “fiscal cliff,” it would only become harder to reach a deal, Obama said.

The next day, Friday, Boehner (R-Ohio) phoned Obama offering what seemed like a major breakthrough: Republicans would agree to raise tax rates for the first time in decades if the president gave a key concession on entitlement reform.

That offer set in motion seven days of dealmaking, posturing and cajoling by Boehner and other House leaders, first on a grand deal with the White House and then on a Plan B with their own House caucus. By Thursday night, both deals had fallen apart, and Boehner was near tears in announcing the failure to his colleagues, Republicans said.

The failure of a grand bargain was the latest oh-so-close moment for Obama and Boehner, who have been dancing around a deal to cut the deficit for the better part of the past two years. And the collapse of Plan B set a new low in Boehner’s sometimes rocky relationship with a House Republican caucus that has long been uneasy about the speaker’s dealmaking with Obama.

Following the latest breakdown in negotiations, Democrats said Boehner should return to the bargaining table with Obama — or just let House Democrats and 25 or so Republicans vote for a Senate-approved plan to extend tax cuts for the middle class. But Republicans said the well has been so poisoned that restarting bipartisan talks would be more difficult than ever.

In a statement late Thursday, Boehner said it was now up to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Obama to come up with an agreement — without explaining what role he would play. The speaker ignored reporters’ questions and, at 8:04 p.m., he walked out of the Capitol.

A week earlier, the possibility of a deal seemed as promising as it ever had.

As he was heading home to Ohio for the weekend, Boehner called Obama with an offer to allow tax rates for incomes above $1 million to rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. In exchange, Boehner demanded a key change to entitlement spending that would lead to reduced benefits.

With a potential $1 trillion in spending cuts, Boehner also suggested that the debt ceiling could be lifted a similar amount and give the Treasury another year of borrowing authority.

The next 72 hours would prove critical. Having offered so much, Boehner hoped he could keep the details quiet long enough for him to get Obama to agree to enough spending cuts to satisfy his caucus — and so that his leadership team could make the case for compromise in person.

But the details did not stay secret for long. Reports leaked out Saturday evening that Boehner had agreed to raise taxes on millionaires. That was followed by a more alarming leak Sunday evening that Boehner was also willing to grant Obama another increase in the federal debt limit. Home in their districts, unsuspecting rank-and-file Republicans were stunned.

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Record vote against death penalty at UN

UNITED NATIONS: A record 111 countries voted on Thursday for a moratorium on capital punishment at a keynote UN General Assembly human rights meeting.

Although not legally binding, campaigners say the vote held every two years sends a strong signal to the slowly shrinking number of nations -- including China, Iran and the United States -- that still execute prisoners.

There were 111 votes in favour of a moratorium, four more than in 2010.

Among the 41 countries that voted against the moratorium were the United States, China, Japan, India, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Thirty-four countries abstained.

European nations have pressed hard for votes backing a moratorium. But Norway's ambassador Geir Pedersen said the growing numbers backing an end to capital punishment show "this is no longer dominated by western countries. This is a global campaign."

"The importance of the vote is that it sends a very strong message to the international community across the board," Pedersen told AFP.

"The General Assembly is the one place where all nations are represented and you have a strong majority in favour of a moratorium."

"There is a global trend toward fewer countries executing people and for us, it is an important issue of principle," the ambassador added.

Pedersen said that when he raises objections to the death penalty in bilateral talks with countries that impose capital punishment, "we have the feeling that they are on the defensive."

About 150 countries now have a moratorium or an outright ban on capital punishment. Just 21 nations were reported to have carried out executions in 2011, according to rights groups.

But the rights groups said the countries that still carry out executions remain hardcore.

China executes thousands of prisoners a year, rights groups say, and Iran put to death more than 650 people in 2011, making it the highest per capita executioner.

Some countries defended maintaining their capital punishment at a UN committee meeting last month where 110 countries voted for a moratorium. Japan said it had to keep the possibility of hanging prisoners because "heinous" crimes are still being committed.

Thursday's vote was held a day after UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay called on Iraq to move toward abolishing the death penalty.

Iraq executed 70 people in the first six months of this year, compared to 67 for the whole of 2011, and 18 in 2010, according to the UN mission in the country.

"The number of executions so far in 2012, and the manner in which they have been carried out in large batches, is extremely dangerous, cannot be justified, and risks seriously undermining the partial and tentative progress on rule of law in Iraq," Pillay said.

A world congress against the death penalty is to be held in Madrid in June.

- AFP/al

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Gujarat election result: Gujarat Parivartan Party shrinks BJP win

RAJKOT: Former chief minister Keshubhai Patel's call for parivartan (change) may have met with indifference. But his Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) denied BJP a sweeter victory in the saffron stronghold Saurashtra. In absence of GPP, BJP was set to break the astronomical figure of 130 seats.

Results show that GPP presence has cost BJP at least 10 seats in Saurashtra namely Talala, Lathi, Palitana, Limdi , Wankaner, Rajkot(east), Jasdan, Jetpur, Dhoraji and Manavadar.

While Keshubhai himself trounced sitting MLA Kanu Bhalala in Visavadar, GPP's Nalin Kotadiya too defeated Dhari legislator Mansukh Bhuva to grab the seat. A former BJP man, Kotadiya had shifted loyalty to Keshubhai two months ago.

GPP played a spoilsport in Wankaner too where BJP had a bright chance of winning the seat back from Congress. Had GPP's Parsottam Bavalava not pocketed around 20,000 votes, BJP's Jitu Somani was sure to win considering that the sitting Congress MLA Javed Pirzada won by just 5,000 votes.

In Rajkot (east), BJP fielded Kashyap Shukla, son of one of BJP founders in state Chiman Shukla. But GPP's Pravin Ambaliya bagged around 15,000-20 ,000 votes, paving way for Congress to win this traditional BJP seat for the first time.

BJP's sitting minister of state for forests Kiritsinh Rana too has only GPP's candidate Pravinsinh Solanki to blame for his defeat. Solanki hails from Darbar community , the same as Rana's . He bagged 2,560 votes that led to Congress's Soma Ganda Patel scraping through by just 1,561.

GPP's Nathu Kamaliya also denied victory to BJP's Govind Parmar in Talala seat of Junagadh district by grabbing nearly 10,599 votes. There are around 20,000 Leuva Patels too in this constituency . The defeat of state BJP president RC Faldu's loss in Jamnagar (rural) seat is also being attributed to GPP's Pranjivan Kundaria.

Meanwhile, the ignominious defeat of Keshubhai's party also brought to fore that fact that regional parties or third fronts cannot become a force to reckon with. In the past, regional parties like Swatantra Party, Maha Saurashtra P arty, Maha Gujarat Janta Parishad, Rashtriya Congress, Kisan Majdoor Lok Paksha and Maha Gujarat Janta Party have tried to test their electoral mettle. But all remained a one-election wonder. "People in Gujarat do not accept regional parties. The main reason is that such parties don't have organizational support and rank and file to build the party," said political analyst.

Shankersinh Vaghela's infamous rebellion against BJP to form Rashtriya Janta Party (RJP) did not help the former chief minister for long. In the ensuing elections, voters ou rightly rejected RJP got just four seats.

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Hollies Get Prickly for a Reason

With shiny evergreen leaves and bright red berries, holly trees are a naturally festive decoration seen throughout the Christmas season.

They're famously sharp. But not all holly leaves are prickly, even on the same tree. And scientists now think they know how the plants are able to make sharper leaves, seemingly at will. (Watch a video about how Christmas trees are made.)

A new study published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society suggests leaf variations on a single tree are the combined result of animals browsing on them and the trees' swift molecular response to that sort of environmental pressure.

Carlos Herrera of the National Research Council of Spain led the study in southeastern Spain. He and his team investigated the European holly tree, Ilex aquifolium. Hollies, like other plants, can make different types of leaves at the same time. This is called heterophylly. Out of the 40 holly trees they studied, 39 trees displayed different kinds of leaves, both prickly and smooth.

Five holly leaves from the same tree.

Photographs by Emmanuel Lattes, Alamy

Some trees looked like they had been browsed upon by wild goats and deer. On those trees, the lower 8 feet (2.5 meters) had more prickly leaves, while higher up the leaves tended to be smooth. Scientists wanted to figure out how the holly trees could make the change in leaf shape so quickly.

All of the leaves on a tree are genetic twins and share exactly the same DNA sequence. By looking in the DNA for traces of a chemical process called methylation, which modifies DNA but doesn't alter the organism's genetic sequence, the team could determine whether leaf variation was a response to environmental or genetic changes. They found a relationship between recent browsing by animals, the growth of prickly leaves, and methylation.

"In holly, what we found is that the DNA of prickly leaves was significantly less methylated than prickless leaves, and from this we inferred that methylation changes are ultimately responsible for leaf shape changes," Herrera said. "The novelty of our study is that we show that these well-known changes in leaf type are associated with differences in DNA methylation patterns, that is, epigenetic changes that do not depend on variation in the sequence of DNA."

"Heterophylly is an obvious feature of a well-known species, and this has been ascribed to browsing. However, until now, no one has been able to come up with a mechanism for how this occurs," said Mike Fay, chief editor of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society and head of genetics at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. "With this new study, we are now one major step forward towards understanding how."

Epigenetic changes take place independently of variation in the genetic DNA sequence. (Read more about epigenetics in National Geographic magazine's "A Thing or Two About Twins.")

"This has clear and important implications for plant conservation," Herrera said. In natural populations that have their genetic variation depleted by habitat loss, the ability to respond quickly, without waiting for slower DNA changes, could help organisms survive accelerated environmental change. The plants' adaptability, he says, is an "optimistic note" amidst so many conservation concerns. (Related: "Wild Holly, Mistletoe, Spread With Warmer Winters.")

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Boehner Pulls Plan B Option

In a surprise development late Thursday night, House Speaker John Boehner pulled his so-called "Plan B option" -- an extension of current tax rates for Americans making up to $1 million a year -- from the House floor, admitting that it did not have the support necessary to pass and leaving a resolution to the fiscal cliff in question.

"The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass. Now it is up to the president to work with [Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff," Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote in a statement. "The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the Jan. 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation's crippling debt. The Senate must now act."

Immediately after the announcement that "plan B" had failed, Dow Jones Industrial futures traded down, with other stock indicators also signaling sharp losses and volatility for Friday morning's opening -- though stock futures generally are lightly traded in the evening. Indicators soon bounced off the initial lows but still signaled a rough start to the final trading session of the week.

In Washington, all legislative business has concluded for the week. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's office said that members could still return "after the Christmas holiday when needed" if a breakthrough is eventually reached.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

Outgoing Sen. Joe Lieberman Criticizes Colleagues for Putting Party Above Country Watch Video

President Obama Promises Action to Reduce Gun Violence Watch Video

The outlook for a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" by Christmas has reached a new low, with no clear path forward, though lawmakers and the White House maintained hope this week for a deficit-reduction compromise by the end of the year.

A senior aide to the speaker confirmed late Thursday evening that Boehner and Obama still have not spoken since Monday evening, when the speaker told the president that he would move ahead with his backup plan, although staff-level talks have continued behind the scenes.

"Speaker Boehner tried to play hardball by asking his members to vote for a tax increase. He learned the hard way that you must find a bipartisan solution," one senior House Democratic leadership aide said reacting to the developments. "Walking away has considerably weakened him and put the country literally on the precipice of the cliff."

Republicans had sought to act to avoid an income tax hike on 99 percent of Americans in 2013, and leverage new pressure on President Obama in the ongoing talks for a broader "cliff" deal.

Obama has threatened to veto the legislation, calling it counterproductive and the cuts burdensome for the middle class, and Reid, D-Nev., has promised not to bring it up for consideration in the Senate.

"'Plan B' ... is a multi-day exercise in futility at a time when we do not have the luxury of exercises in futility," said White House spokesman Jay Carney Thursday.

Democrats complained that the posturing on "plan B" distracted the focus from a broader bargain on taxes, spending, entitlement reforms and other measures that had begun coming into focus earlier this week.

Reid said the Senate would break for the Christmas holiday but return to Washington one week from Thursday. President Obama will not join his family in Hawaii on Friday as planned if the "cliff" is not resolved, an administration official said.

"If you look at Speaker Boehner's proposal and you look at my proposal, they're actually pretty close," Obama said Wednesday, appealing for a big "fair deal."

"It is a deal that can get done," he said. "But it cannot be done if every side wants 100 percent. And part of what voters were looking for is some compromise up here."

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Baseball: Ichiro Suzuki inks new 2-year deal with NY Yankees

NEW YORK: Ichiro Suzuki signed a two-year contract with the New York Yankees, giving the Japanese outfielder a chance to crack 3,000 career Major League Baseball hits while wearing Yankee pinstripes.

The deal, worth a reported $13 million, allows the Yankees to keep a 39-year-old standout who has been a 10-time All-Star in 12 seasons since coming from Japan. He was obtained by the Yankees from the Seattle Mariners last July.

"The Yankees are the kind of team that I always envisioned being a part of," Suzuki said on Wednesday. "Everyone in the world of competition has a strong desire to win, but the Yankees also have an atmosphere where losing is not an option.

"These two observations may sound similar, but I believe it is a rarity to find both co-existing in the same organization."

"I believe the Yankees organization appreciates that there is a difference between a 39-year-old who has played relying only on talent, and a 39-year-old who has prepared, practiced, and thought thoroughly through many experiences for their craft.

"I am very thankful and I will do my best to deliver on their expectations."

Suzuki hit .322 with five home runs and 27 runs batted in over 67 games for New York last season and overall batted .283 with 77 runs scored, 28 doubles, six triples, nine homers, 55 runs batted in and 29 stolen bases in 162 games.

By recording base hits in his first 12 games with the Yankees, Suzuki matched a team record for the longest hit streak to begin a Yankees career with Don Slaught's 1988 effort.

Suzuki, who is expected to replace free agent Nick Swisher as the Yankees' starting right-fielder, has 2,606 hits in his North American career, giving him a chance to reach the 3,000 milestone with the Yankees.

Since leaving Japan after a nine-year career in the Pacific League with three Most Valuable Player awards, Suzuki has batted .322 in Major League Baseball with two batting titles.

He was the 2001 American League Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year with the Mariners.

- AFP/al

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