01/07/2013 at 04:10 PM EST
James Holmes
University of CO/Splash News Online
Officer Justin Grizzle choked up on the stand recalling slipping on the bloody floor as he encountered "several bodies throughout the theater laying motionless." He testified that, as he drove six victims to the hospital, "there was so much blood I could hear it sloshing around in the back of my car."
Among the victims of the Aurora, Colo., shooting he transported was Caleb Medley, a stand-up comedian who was shot in the head and is the last victim still hospitalized. Grizzle said Medley made a "god-awful" gurgling sound as he tried to breathe.
"I shouted, 'Don’t f–––ing die on me,'" Grizzle testified.
The first witness, Officer Jason Oviatt, testified that Holmes, a 25-year-old former neuroscience student, told them explosives in his apartment would go off if they were tripped.
"He was very relaxed," Oviatt testified. "It was like there weren't normal emotional responses."
The hearing, in Centennial, Colo., is to determine if there is sufficient evidence against Holmes on the 166 criminal charges in the July 20 attack, which killed 12 people and injured at least 70.
Some of the survivors are expected to testify during the week-long proceeding. Before this week, authorities had avoided discussing details and evidence about the highly publicized attack.
BERLIN (AP) — Organ donations have dropped sharply in Germany following a scandal over alleged corruption at several transplant clinics.
The German Foundation for Organ Transplantation says the number of organs donated fell almost 13 percent to 3,917 last year, the lowest figure in a decade.
Several German clinics are being investigated over allegations that doctors manipulated waiting lists to help some patients appear sicker than they were and so receive transplants sooner.
The foundation said Monday that the scandal had "massively shaken" the public's faith in the transplant system.
Some 12,000 people in Germany require organ transplants each year.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks lost ground on Monday, as investors drew back from recent gains that lifted the S&P 500 to a five-year high, in anticipation of sluggish growth in corporate profits.
Shares of financial companies dipped after a group of major U.S. banks agreed to pay a total of $8.5 billion to end a government inquiry into faulty mortgage foreclosures. The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, was down 0.3 percent.
Other sectors were hit as well, most notably energy and utilities. The S&P 500 energy sector index <.gspe> fell 0.8 percent and the utilities sector <.gspu> was off 1.1 percent.
The day's decline came a session after the S&P 500 finished at a five-year high, boosted by a budget deal and strong economic data. The S&P 500 rose 4.6 percent last week, the best weekly gain in more than a year.
"It's a little bit of taking some risk off the table ahead of profit season, you're not going to see anything all that great" on earnings, said Larry Peruzzi, senior equity trader at Cabrera Capital Markets Inc in Boston.
Earnings are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results, and analysts' current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October. Fourth-quarter earnings growth is expected to come in at 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Aluminum company Alcoa Inc begins the reporting season by announcing its results after Tuesday's market close. Alcoa shares fell 1.7 percent at $9.10.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 50.92 points, or 0.38 percent, to 13,384.29. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> fell 4.58 points, or 0.31 percent, to 1,461.89. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 2.84 points, or 0.09 percent, to 3,098.81.
Ten mortgage servicers - including Bank of America
In a separate case, Bank of America also announced roughly $11.6 billion of settlements with mortgage finance company Fannie Mae and a $1.8 billion sale of collection rights on home loans.
The bank also entered into agreements with Nationstar Mortgage Holdings
Bank of America shares lost 0.2 percent at $12.09 while Nationstar Mortgage Holdings
Citigroup shares were up 0.09 percent to $42.47, and Wells Fargo shares fell 0.5 percent to $34.77.
"The financials probably have the wind behind them now with a lot of the regulations coming out ... the market has to absorb a lot of the gains, and for that reason there's a pullback from this level," said Warren West, principal at Greentree Brokerage Services in Philadelphia.
Shares of U.S. jet maker Boeing Co
Amazon.com shares hit their highest price ever at $269.22 after Morgan Stanley raised is rating on the stock. Shares were up 3.6 percent at $268.46.
Video-streaming service Netflix Inc
Walt Disney Co
Volume was lower than average, as 4.78 billion shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq. This is well below the 2012 average of 6.42 billion per session.
Declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,629 to 1,363, while on the Nasdaq decliners beat advancers 1,438 to 1,066.
(Reporting By Gabriel Debenedetti; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)
Klemens von Klemperer, a refugee from Nazi Germany who wrote what is widely considered the seminal history of the movement among the country’s conservative elite to overthrow Hitler, died on Dec. 23 at his home in Easthampton, Mass. He was 96.
His death was confirmed by his son, James.
Dr. von Klemperer, an emeritus professor of history at Smith College, was one of a generation of refugee historians who helped lay the groundwork for modern German and European studies in the United States, a group that also included Hajo Holborn, Fritz Stern and Peter Gay.
A privileged child who came from a family of German bankers and industrialists, he had taken a leading role in demonstrations against Hitler as a student in Vienna before fleeing to the United States in 1938.
Dr. von Klemperer, the author of seven books, was best known for his 1992 work, “German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945.”
On July 20, 1944, in the signature moment for the movement, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German Army colonel, placed a briefcase containing a bomb under the map table at Wolfsschanze, Hitler’s headquarters in a bunker in East Prussia. Hitler survived the ensuing blast, proclaiming divine providence, and set off a wave of executions of conspirators.
Dr. von Klemperer’s book explored the broader aims of the resistance movement and how its leaders — among them the aristocrat Helmuth James von Moltke and the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as diplomats and high-ranking military men — had made many contacts seeking support from the Western Allies.
“He really charted the foreign contacts of that group; that’s the importance of von Klemperer’s work,” Catherine Epstein, chairwoman of the history department at Amherst College and an expert on German history, said in an interview. “These were very nationalistic resisters. They wanted to have an independent Germany, did not want to be occupied by the Allies.”
Their outreach was thwarted by the Allies’ goal of unconditional German surrender and by a lack of trust in the resistance movement. Yet, for Dr. von Klemperer, their efforts achieved a higher goal.
“He attempted to show that there were indeed good Germans, and that they were deeply, morally offended by the Nazis,” said Allan Mitchell, who profiled Dr. von Klemperer in his 2011 book “Fleeing Nazi Germany: Five Historians Migrate to America.” “That’s what was most important to him.”
In “German Resistance Against Hitler,” Dr. von Klemperer wrote, “The determination of the German Resistance to reach the ‘greater world’ stands as an example for the many dissidents and freedom movements who in our day, still plagued by oppression, are appealing to the conscience of the world.”
Klemens Wilhelm von Klemperer was born in Berlin on Nov. 2, 1916, into what had been a Jewish family until his grandfather, Gustav, the director of one of Germany’s largest banks, converted to Protestantism.
Klemens’s father, Herbert, was the president of a company that manufactured locomotives, submarines and torpedoes for the German military.
That status and the family’s conversion mattered less and less after anti-Jewish laws were passed in 1933. In 1935, young Klemens joined his mother’s family in Vienna.
He studied history at the University of Vienna and, after Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938, took part in student street protests. But by November, with his family’s property seized, he had fled to the United States. Eventually, members of his family were killed at Auschwitz.
He enrolled at Harvard under a program for refugee scholars, but his studies were interrupted by his service as an intelligence officer in the United States Army. After returning to Harvard, he received his doctorate in history in 1949 and soon joined the faculty at Smith, where he taught for 37 years.
Among Dr. von Klemperer’s other books are “A Noble Combat: The Letters of Shiela Grant Duff and Adam von Trott zu Solz, 1932-1938” (1988), about the romantic relationship of a British woman and a German diplomat as they struggled with their concerns about the Nazi regime, and “Ignaz Seipel: Christian Statesman in a Time of Crisis” (1972), a biography of an Austrian priest who became chancellor in the 1920s.
Besides his son, Dr. von Klemperer is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Elizabeth Gallaher; a daughter, Catharine Utzschneider; and four grandchildren.
Three years ago, Dr. von Klemperer’s memoir, “Voyage Through the 20th Century,” was published.
“I was not an extraordinary person, but I did live in extraordinary times,” he wrote, “and my small mission was somehow to make sense of it all.”
TOKYO (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp’s answer to the brutal onslaught on its TV sales may be in a product the Japanese firm launched 17 years ago and which is a must-have for U.S. police cars.
Two thirds of the 420,000 patrol cars in the United States are equipped with the company’s rugged Toughbook computers, and Panasonic chief Kazuhiro Tsuga sees the niche product as a model for how the sprawling conglomerate can make money beyond a gadget mass market increasingly dominated by Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc.
“What we need are businesses that earn, and they don’t necessarily have to have big sales,” Tsuga told reporters after his appointment as company president was approved in June.
Tsuga also sees avionics – Panasonic is the world’s leading maker of in-flight entertainment systems – automated production machinery, and lighting as profit earners as income from TVs and other consumer electronics dwindles.
Panasonic, Sony Corp and Sharp Corp have been hit hard by South Korean-made TVs, Blu-ray players and mobiles and Apple tablets that threaten to wipe out Japan as a global consumer electronics hub. The Toughbook, sold only to businesses and governments, was conceived as a response to the type of profit sapping competition that is now roiling TVs.
“At the time, we were losing in personal computers to Compaq and IBM,” said Hide Harada, who heads the Toughbook unit from the group’s headquarters in Osaka, western Japan. IBM later sold its laptop business to China’s Lenovo Group and Compaq was absorbed by Hewlett Packard.
“It was a guerilla strategy,” Harada said, recalling the Toughbook’s launch in 1996. Panasonic’s promotion campaign included driving jeeps over its computers, dropping them on the ground and dousing them with coffee on morning TV shows.
At rival Sony, too, signs of a niche strategy are emerging in a battle with Apple and South Korean brands that are making gains from a weaker won currency. Combining technologies from several divisions – from projectors to video cameras and headphones – Sony’s 3D Viewer head-mounted visor gives users the feel they are sitting in the middle of a 500-seat movie theater.
The target audience, says product manager Hideki Mori, are those consumers looking to immerse themselves in computer graphics and high quality movies. “Demand has been greater than anticipated,” he said, declining to give specific sales numbers.
LOSING GROUND
The two Japanese firms will show off their wares at this week’s annual CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, an event usually dominated by prototypes for next-generation TV technology. Tsuga is due to deliver the event’s keynote speech.
In the past, the Japanese have showcased ultra high-definition 4K televisions, while Samsung and LG Electronics Inc have displayed their ultra-thin OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens. But, at a price tag likely 10 times that of conventional LCD screens, consumers will take a while to make the generational leap.
Meanwhile, losses at Panasonic, Sony and Sharp mount up. Panasonic has predicted a net loss of $ 8.9 billion in the year to end-March, while Sharp, which has been bailed out by banks, expects an annual loss of $ 5.24 billion. Helped by asset sales, Sony should eke out a small profit.
Japan’s share of the flat panel TV market has shrunk by around a quarter in the past two years, to around 31 percent, according to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association. Amid a prolonged strong yen squeeze, the industry lobby expects Japan’s share of the DVD and Blu-ray disc player market to have dropped to around half last year from nearly two-thirds in 2010. Just 8 of every 100 mobile phones sold globally are now Japanese. Manufacturers have shifted TV production overseas, with output in Japan now less than a tenth of what it was two years ago.
Tsuga, who acknowledges Panasonic is a “loser” in consumer electronics, has warned his business units they will be closed or sold if they fail to match Toughbook’s success, giving each two years to deliver at least a 5 percent operating margin.
Any niche-winning strategy that takes his company away from mass market products means Tsuga will need fewer workers, investors say. Panasonic is Japan’s biggest commercial employer with a workforce of more than 300,000. It plans to axe 10,000 jobs in the year to March on top of the 36,000 that were cut in the previous year. More big cuts in Japan, where major lay-offs are uncommon and severance packages expensive, won’t be easy, said Yuuki Sakurai, CEO at Fukoku Capital Management in Tokyo, which manages assets worth $ 18.4 billion, but doesn’t own Panasonic stock.
“It’s like trying to chase the course of a battleship. If they want to become a light cruiser or destroyer, they’ll have to lose employees,” Sakurai said.
GLOBAL STANDARD
Workers Panasonic will likely keep are those in Kobe in western Japan who build the Toughbook PCs – a category defined by a U.S. military quality benchmark that serves as a de facto global standard. Its market share is on a par with Apple’s in tablets, with most U.S. police departments willing to pay as much as $ 3,000 for the rugged laptops which can withstand bumpy high-speed chases and other rigors of street policing.
“They have been near bullet-proof. We had a patrol car catch fire and after all the heat, smoke and water dissipated the computer continued to function,” said Bill Richards, logistics commander for the Tucson police in Arizona, whose force owns close to 650 Toughbooks that connect patrol cars with dispatchers, license records and other police databases.
Other customers include the New York Police Department, California Highway Patrol, Brazilian Military Police and British and U.S. military, which use them on unmanned aerial drones.
“Panasonic is the bellwether, the most recognized brand. The Toughbook is almost synonymous with rugged notebooks,” said David Krebs, a vice president at VDC Research.
While margins in the global PC market are getting slimmer – research firm IHS iSuppli sees annual sales growth of around 7 percent over the next four years from about 216 million PCs last year – the premium-price, fatter margin, rugged PC niche is seen growing by around 10 percent a year to nearly 1.2 million computers by 2016, according to VDC Research.
ANALOG EDGE, DIGITAL SAMENESS
At the Kobe factory, Toughbooks are put through their paces: hosed down to test water resistance, baked to 50 degrees Celsius, chilled to minus 20 degrees and dropped on their tops, bottoms, sides and corners.
Harada describes it as an analog edge in digital products.
“Whoever makes them, the insides of a computer are pretty much the same. It’s the mechanical side that makes us different,” he explained.
The creators of Sony’s 3D Viewer, too, are looking for mechanical appeal as much as electronic prowess. A second, redesigned model, which is now on sale in Japan, is 25 percent lighter at 330 grams, has a better grip and gives users the option of headphones or earplugs, said Mori. “We want to make it lighter,” he added, noting engineers are looking to slim down the heaviest component, the lenses.
While Sony keeps chasing consumers, Panasonic is pursuing a business-to-business niche market model that Tsuga has put at the heart of his revival plan. High on Harada’s target list for the Toughbook are Japanese police forces, which don’t yet buy the computers.
There are no plans, he said, to make cheaper mass market models – which could protect some jobs in the group.
“We aren’t going to put it in Best Buy or Walmart. I don’t think it would turn out well.”
($ 1 = 85.9250 Japanese yen)
(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
01/06/2013 at 03:00 PM EST
The Silver Linings Playbook star, who turned 38 on Saturday, was greeted by a slew of screaming fans when he arrived on the red carpet at the 24th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala in Palm Springs, Calif.
"Bradley started interacting with his fans and then they broke out into song, chanting 'Happy birthday to you,'" an onlooker tells PEOPLE.
Running late into the event because of the fan holdup, Cooper whisked by many of the reporters, and when asked about his birthday plans, answered with a smile, "I'm here!"
But the birthday surprises didn't end there.
After being honored with a Desert Palm Achievement Award presented by Playbook director David O. Russell, PEOPLE's former Sexiest Man Alive was given a shoutout by event host Mary Hart, who insisted the entire room sing "Happy Birthday" to the actor.
"It seemed very unexpected," the onlooker adds. "He seemed a little shy and embarrassed by it, but while managing to smile still."
– Dahvi Shira
CHICAGO (AP) — Roll up a sleeve for the blood pressure cuff. Stick out a wrist for the pulse-taking. Lift your tongue for the thermometer. Report how many minutes you are active or getting exercise.
Wait, what?
If the last item isn't part of the usual drill at your doctor's office, a movement is afoot to change that. One recent national survey indicated only a third of Americans said their doctors asked about or prescribed physical activity.
Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's largest nonprofit health insurance plans, made a big push a few years ago to get its southern California doctors to ask patients about exercise. Since then, Kaiser has expanded the program across California and to several other states. Now almost 9 million patients are asked at every visit, and some other medical systems are doing it, too.
Here's how it works: During any routine check of vital signs, a nurse or medical assistant asks how many days a week the patient exercises and for how long. The number of minutes per week is posted along with other vitals at the top the medical chart. So it's among the first things the doctor sees.
"All we ask our physicians to do is to make a comment on it, like, 'Hey, good job,' or 'I noticed today that your blood pressure is too high and you're not doing any exercise. There's a connection there. We really need to start you walking 30 minutes a day,'" said Dr. Robert Sallis, a Kaiser family doctor. He hatched the vital sign idea as part of a larger initiative by doctors groups.
He said Kaiser doctors generally prescribe exercise first, instead of medication, and for many patients who follow through that's often all it takes.
It's a challenge to make progress. A study looking at the first year of Kaiser's effort showed more than a third of patients said they never exercise.
Sallis said some patients may not be aware that research shows physical inactivity is riskier than high blood pressure, obesity and other health risks people know they should avoid. As recently as November a government-led study concluded that people who routinely exercise live longer than others, even if they're overweight.
Zendi Solano, who works for Kaiser as a research assistant in Pasadena, Calif., says she always knew exercise was a good thing. But until about a year ago, when her Kaiser doctor started routinely measuring it, she "really didn't take it seriously."
She was obese, and in a family of diabetics, had elevated blood sugar. She sometimes did push-ups and other strength training but not anything very sustained or strenuous.
Solano, 34, decided to take up running and after a couple of months she was doing three miles. Then she began training for a half marathon — and ran that 13-mile race in May in less than three hours. She formed a running club with co-workers and now runs several miles a week. She also started eating smaller portions and buying more fruits and vegetables.
She is still overweight but has lost 30 pounds and her blood sugar is normal.
Her doctor praised the improvement at her last physical in June and Solano says the routine exercise checks are "a great reminder."
Kaiser began the program about three years ago after 2008 government guidelines recommended at least 2 1/2 hours of moderately vigorous exercise each week. That includes brisk walking, cycling, lawn-mowing — anything that gets you breathing a little harder than normal for at least 10 minutes at a time.
A recently published study of nearly 2 million people in Kaiser's southern California network found that less than a third met physical activity guidelines during the program's first year ending in March 2011. That's worse than results from national studies. But promoters of the vital signs effort think Kaiser's numbers are more realistic because people are more likely to tell their own doctors the truth.
Dr. Elizabeth Joy of Salt Lake City has created a nearly identical program and she expects 300 physicians in her Intermountain Healthcare network to be involved early this year.
"There are some real opportunities there to kind of shift patients' expectations about the value of physical activity on health," Joy said.
NorthShore University HealthSystem in Chicago's northern suburbs plans to start an exercise vital sign program this month, eventually involving about 200 primary care doctors.
Dr. Carrie Jaworski, a NorthShore family and sports medicine specialist, already asks patients about exercise. She said some of her diabetic patients have been able to cut back on their medicines after getting active.
Dr. William Dietz, an obesity expert who retired last year from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said measuring a patient's exercise regardless of method is essential, but that "naming it as a vital sign kind of elevates it."
Figuring out how to get people to be more active is the important next step, he said, and could have a big effect in reducing medical costs.
___
Online:
Exercise: http://1.usa.gov/b6AkMa
___
AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors' "fiscal cliff" worries are likely to give way to more fundamental concerns, like earnings, as fourth-quarter reports get under way next week.
Financial results, which begin after the market closes on Tuesday with aluminum company Alcoa , are expected to be only slightly better than the third-quarter's lackluster results. As a warning sign, analyst current estimates are down sharply from what they were in October.
That could set stocks up for more volatility following a week of sharp gains that put the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> on Friday at the highest close since December 31, 2007. The index also registered its biggest weekly percentage gain in more than a year.
Based on a Reuters analysis, Europe ranks among the chief concerns cited by companies that warned on fourth-quarter results. Uncertainty about the region and its weak economic outlook were cited by more than half of the 25 largest S&P 500 companies that issued warnings.
In the most recent earnings conference calls, macroeconomic worries were cited by 10 companies while the U.S. "fiscal cliff" was cited by at least nine as reasons for their earnings warnings.
"The number of things that could go wrong isn't so high, but the magnitude of how wrong they could go is what's worrisome," said Kurt Winters, senior portfolio manager for Whitebox Mutual Funds in Minneapolis.
Negative-to-positive guidance by S&P 500 companies for the fourth quarter was 3.6 to 1, the second worst since the third quarter of 2001, according to Thomson Reuters data.
U.S. lawmakers narrowly averted the "fiscal cliff" by coming to a last-minute agreement on a bill to avoid steep tax hikes this weeks -- driving the rally in stocks -- but the battle over further spending cuts is expected to resume in two months.
Investors also have seen a revival of worries about Europe's sovereign debt problems, with Moody's in November downgrading France's credit rating and debt crises looming for Spain and other countries.
"You have a recession in Europe as a base case. Europe is still the biggest trading partner with a lot of U.S. companies, and it's still a big chunk of global capital spending," said Adam Parker, chief U.S. equity strategist at Morgan Stanley in New York.
Among companies citing worries about Europe was eBay
REVENUE WORRIES
One of the biggest worries voiced about earnings has been whether companies will be able to continue to boost profit growth despite relatively weak revenue growth.
S&P 500 revenue fell 0.8 percent in the third quarter for the first decline since the third quarter of 2009, Thomson Reuters data showed. Earnings growth for the quarter was a paltry 0.1 percent after briefly dipping into negative territory.
On top of that, just 40 percent of S&P 500 companies beat revenue expectations in the third quarter, while 64.2 percent beat earnings estimates, the Thomson Reuters data showed.
For the fourth quarter, estimates are slightly better but are well off estimates for the quarter from just a few months earlier. S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 2.8 percent while revenue is expected to have gone up 1.9 percent.
Back in October, earnings growth for the fourth quarter was forecast up 9.9 percent.
In spite of the cautious outlooks, some analysts still see a good chance for earnings beats this reporting period.
"The thinking is you need top line growth for earnings to continue to expand, and we've seen the market defy that," said Mike Jackson, founder of Denver-based investment firm T3 Equity Labs.
Based on his analysis, energy, industrials and consumer discretionary are the S&P sectors most likely to beat earnings expectations in the upcoming season, while consumer staples, materials and utilities are the least likely to beat, Jackson said.
Sounding a positive note on Friday, drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co
(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, sounding defiant, confident and, to critics, out of touch with the magnitude of his people’s grievances, proposed Sunday what he called a plan to resolve the country’s 21-month uprising with a new constitution and cabinet.
But he offered no new acknowledgment of the gains by the rebels fighting against him, the excesses of his government or the aspirations of the Syrian people. Mr. Assad also ruled out talks with the armed opposition and pointedly ignored its central demand that he step down, instead using much of a nearly hourlong speech to justify his harsh military crackdown.
Mr. Assad waved to a cheering, chanting crowd as he strode to the stage of the Damascus Opera House in the central Umayyad Square — where residents said security forces had been deployed heavily the night before. In his first public speech since June 2012, he repeated his longstanding assertions that the movement against him was driven by “murderous criminals” and terrorists receiving financing from abroad, and he appeared to push back hard against recent international efforts to broker a compromise.
“Everyone who comes to Syria knows that Syria accepts advice but not orders,” he said.
His speech came a week after the United Nations and Arab League envoy on Syria, the senior Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, visited Damascus, the capital, in a push for a negotiated solution.
“Who should we negotiate with? Terrorists?” Mr. Assad asked. “We will negotiate with their masters.”
Mr. Assad’s speech was a disappointment for international mediators and many Syrians who say they believe that without a negotiated settlement, Syria’s conflict will descend into an even bloodier stage. The United Nations estimates that more than 60,000 people have died in what began as a peaceful protest movement and transformed into armed struggle after security forces fired on demonstrators.
Rebels have made gains in the north and east of Syria and in the Damascus suburbs, but Mr. Assad’s government has pushed back with devastating airstrikes and artillery bombardments and appears confident that it can hold the capital. Neither side appears ready to give up the prospect of a military victory.
The tenor of Mr. Assad’s speech is likely to raise the question of whether Mr. Brahimi’s mission serves any purpose; there was no immediate comment from him or his staff.
Mr. Assad’s opponents rejected the proposal as meaningless, sticking to their longstanding demand that the president resign as a precondition to negotiations.
“We can’t deal with this murderous regime at all,” George Sabra, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, said in a brief interview. “This regime has killed 60,000 people, so no one could possibly think that working with this regime is a possibility. It is out of the question.”
Mr. Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for 42 years, said Sunday that he was open to dialogue with “those who have not betrayed Syria,” apparently a reference to tolerated opposition groups that reject armed revolution, like the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, whose members have been floated by Syria’s allies China and Russia as possible compromise brokers.
Yet Mr. Assad’s speech appeared unlikely to satisfy even those among his opponents who reject the armed rebellion, since it made no apology for the arrests of peaceful activists or for airstrikes that have destroyed neighborhoods. Mr. Assad gave no sign of acknowledging that the movement against him was anything more than a foreign plot or had any goals other than to inflict suffering and destroy the country.
“They killed the intellectuals in order to afflict ignorance on us,” Mr. Assad said. “They attacked the infrastructure in order to make our life difficult, they deprived children from school in order to bring the country backward.”
He added, “The enemies of the people are the enemies of God, and the enemies of God will burn in hell.”
Mr. Assad has framed the uprising as an attack by the West and its allies, and the members of the exile opposition leadership as puppets of their foreign supporters, including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States, which has offered what it calls nonlethal support and recognized the main opposition body, now known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.
Some armed rebel groups have used techniques that randomly target civilians, like car bombs, and there are foreign fighters among the rebels. But most of the armed movement is made up of Syrians who took up arms during the uprising or defected from the armed forces.
In his speech, Mr. Assad thanked officers and conscripts and vowed that he would stay by their side, apparently seeking to dispel speculation that he will flee the country. He spoke against a backdrop of snapshots that was reminiscent of montages that the opposition shows of people killed by the government.
When he finished the crowd chanted, “With our souls, with our blood, we defend you, Assad,” and vowed to be his “shabiha,” the term that has come to designate pro-government militias that have attacked demonstrators.
Scores of people then rushed toward him with an almost aggressive frenzy. Bodyguards pushed them back to form a phalanx that slowly escorted Mr. Assad through the crowd.
Many observers wryly noted on social media that the opera house was a fitting setting for the speech.
“It was operatic in its otherworldly fantasy, unrelated to realities outside the building,” Rami G. Khouri, of the Beirut-based newspaper The Daily Star, wrote on Twitter.
Mr. Assad said the first step in his plan would be for foreign countries to stop financing the rebels; then his government would put down its weapons, he said — although he reserved the right to continue to fight terrorism, which his government has defined as nearly any opponent.
Next would come national dialogue, but only with groups Mr. Assad termed acceptable; then a constitution approved by referendum; then a coalition government. There was no mention of holding elections before Mr. Assad’s term expires in 2014.
Hania Mourtada contributed reporting.
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