European shares, dollar soften after Fed's stimulus plan

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares edged lower and the dollar slipped against most major currencies on Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced new measures to support the world's largest economy.

Oil, copper and gold also fell as investors remained worried about whether the United States would miss a year-end deadline to avert a "fiscal cliff" of about $600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts that will start in January.

The Fed said it would buy $45 billion of Treasuries a month on top of the $40 billion a month in mortgage-backed bonds it started buying in September. It also took the unprecedented step of indicating that interest rates would remain near zero until unemployment falls to at least 6.5 percent so long as inflation was contained.

After the decision MSCI's world equities index <.miwd00000pus> extended its recent gains by 0.15 percent to 338.27 points, helped by a broad rally across Asian markets, as investors welcomed the setting of clearer targets for inflation and jobs.

But European share markets were less impressed, having enjoyed a three-week rally that has sent prices to 18-month highs. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> was down 0.3 percent in early trading at 1,135.65 points.

"I think we'll get a slow drift into the year-end ... There are no real factors that are going to come in to send it significantly higher. The overhang of the fiscal cliff is going to weigh on the upside to a certain extent," said Michael Hewson, senior analyst at CMC Markets.

London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> opened 0.2 to 0.4 percent lower.

In the foreign exchange markets, the dollar slipped to a one-week low of 79.711 against a basket of major currencies <.dxy> after the Fed decision, sending the euro to a one-week high of $1.3098.

Sentiment toward the euro was supported by a deal clinched early on Thursday to give the European Central Bank new powers to supervise euro zone banks, the first step in a new phase of closer integration to help underpin the single currency.

Greece's foreign lenders also welcomed a bond buyback, paving the way for Athens to get long-delayed aid to avoid bankruptcy.

The yen came under pressure as markets took the view that the Fed's move made it more likely that the Bank of Japan would further ease monetary policy to support its weak economy at its policy meeting next week.

The greenback touched its loftiest in nearly nine months against the yen, hitting a high of 83.635 yen before settling at around 83.48 yen.

Japan also holds an election on Sunday, with opinion polls showing conservative former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's opposition Liberal Democratic Party, which favors more stimulus measures, is heading for a resounding victory.

Oil prices retreated from overnight gains, with U.S. crude futures down 0.25 percent at $86.54 a barrel and Brent falling 0.2 percent to $109.30.

Gold tumbled more than 1 percent on stop-loss selling after touching its highest in nearly two weeks on Wednesday to trade around $1,693.80 an ounce.

(Reporting by Richard Hubbard; Editing by Will Waterman)

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This Kid Dances Better Than a Cheerleader

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

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So we were ready to toss this video aside after the first few seconds. Our thinking: we have seen way more “Gangnam Style” videos than we ever wanted to … but, we’re glad we stayed for the whole thing. 

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In the coming weeks nerds will proclaim that you will need to see The Hobbit despite its terrible reviews. When they do, and they will, just show them this trailer and its really solid Sean Bean theorem: 

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So this is Frank Ocean singing Radiohead (quite well). And this is also the video which you should have handy the next time your boss catches you YouTubing that terrible (but really great) Ke$ ha song. 

Old dogs, new tricks? 

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hugh Hefner's Engagement Ring to Crystal Harris Revealed

By Mike Fleeman

12/11/2012 at 07:00 PM EST

The wedding's back on – though it may be a good idea to save that gift receipt.

Hugh Hefner, 86, officially confirms that he is once again engaged to Crystal Harris, 26, telling his Twitter followers, "I've given Crystal Harris a ring. I love the girl."

And to prove it, Harris posted photos of the big diamond sparkler, calling it "my beautiful ring."

Neither announced a wedding date, though sources tell PEOPLE they're planning to tie the knot at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve.

Whether that still happens remains to be seen.

This is the plan they had in 2011 – a wedding at the mansion – except that Harris called it off just days before the nuptials were scheduled to happen in front of 300 invited guests.

Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris

David Livingston / Getty

The onetime Playmate of the Month then ripped Hef's bedroom skills, calling him a two-second man, to which Hefner replied, "I missed a bullet" by not marrying her.

A year later, Hefner's "runaway bunny" bounded back to him.

• Reporting by JENNIFER GARCIA

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Shares, euro supported by hopes for Fed easing

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares and the euro edged higher on Wednesday supported by expectations of more monetary stimulus from the U.S. Federal Reserve when it ends its two-day policy meeting later in the day.

Oil, copper and gold prices were also underpinned by the talk as well as by recent positive economic data from Europe and the United States, while the dollar hovered near multi-month lows against higher yielding currencies.

Markets expect the Fed to expand its current asset purchase scheme, committing to buy $45 billion of U.S. debt and extend its purchases of mortgage-backed debt, to help sustain the fragile U.S. economic recovery.

"We think that more quantitative easing is coming and this next round will be the most aggressive yet," said Ralf Preusser, head of European rates research at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research.

European shares were on course for an eighth straight day of gain ahead of the Fed decision, which is due after markets in the region close, though the FTSEurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> was barely changed in early trading after hitting an 18-month high on Tuesday.

London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> all opened little changed from the previous day's level, while a 0.1 percent drop in U.S. stock futures hinted at a soft Wall Street open. <.l><.eu><.n/>

Earlier, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> gained 0.5 percent to hit a fresh 16-month peak, helping push the MSCI world equity index <.miwd00000pus> up 0.1 percent to 337.36 points.

The euro pulled further away from a two-week low of around $1.2876 seen on Friday and stood at $1.3001, hanging on to the gains made after Tuesday's surprisingly strong ZEW economic sentiment index in Germany.

The dollar stood at 80.05 against a basket of major currencies <.dxy>, barely changed from late U.S. levels on Tuesday, but against higher yielding units like the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars, it was drifting lower..

London copper was up 0.5 percent at $8,139.75 a metric ton (1.1023 tons), near two-month highs, while spot gold inched up 0.1 percent to $1,713.15 an ounce.

Brent crude traded above $108 a barrel as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) prepared to meet in Vienna where it was widely expected to retain its output target of 30 million barrels per day.

Brent futures were up 33 cents at $108.33 a barrel while U.S. crude was 21 cents higher at $85.99 a barrel.

(Reporting by Richard Hubbard. Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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India Ink: A Rare View Inside Delhi's Royal Court

With her thinly arched eyebrows, flowing mane of black hair and polished English, the journalist Tavleen Singh looks very much the part of the upper-class New Delhi socialite, a set into which she was born and in which she moves with ease.

Yet unlike most members of this fast-fading network of genteel affluence, who abide by a strict code of discretion, Ms. Singh has broken ranks by writing a memoir, “Durbar,” transporting readers into these privileged cocoons. Centered on the tumultuous years between 1975 and 1991, “Durbar,” which means a ruler’s court in Hindi, serves up Ms. Singh’s recollections of hobnobbing with Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi and their friends, including assorted scions of influential families who went on to wield considerable power in later decades.

Published earlier this month, the book is causing waves because Ms. Singh’s unique vantage point offers a small glimpse into the lives of the Gandhis and their circle. Despite the fact that the family has dominated Indian politics for over a century, and certainly since the country’s independence, the public has little knowledge of their private lives. Amazingly, there are very few hard-hitting, incisive biographies by Indian insiders about Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi.

“Durbar” may not qualify as one, but the book’s fly-on-the wall details mean it is being devoured by readers from India’s social and political elite nonetheless.

Languid lunches, nightclub outings, drawn-out dinners where politics was never a main subject — Ms. Singh entered this circle when she was 24, when New Delhi was still a sleepy little town of few cars, permeated with the air of a down-at-heels country club.

“We were just hanging around, who knew that Rajiv would be prime minister?” the 62-year-old Ms. Singh recalls with some wonder even after all these decades. Wearing a bright orange and pink silk sari, she recalls going to a “disco in the Maurya hotel where they wouldn’t let us in because we were too many people and we kept whispering, ‘But this is the P.M.’s son!’”

Today a syndicated political columnist who writes in both Hindi and English, back then Ms. Singh was a rookie reporter with the Statesman newspaper. An ironic stroke of timing–Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency a month after she started work–helped Ms. Singh become more politically aware. “When I saw what a politician could do to a country, that’s when I realized I was interested in political reporting,” she says.

Newsrooms across India were still male-dominated, but because of the emergency, Ms. Singh was propelled into political reporting. Her insider status gave her access that most journalists, young and old alike, would have killed for (she once scheduled an interview for one of her bosses, the editor M.J. Akbar, with Rajiv Gandhi).

“Durbar” is peppered with anecdotes and obscure details about India’s first family. One example: Naveen Patnaik, an old friend of Ms. Singh’s and current chief minister of Orissa, once complimented Sonia Gandhi on her white dress, asking if it were a Valentino, to which Sonia replied, “I had it made in Khan Market by my darzi (tailor).”

Ms. Singh says the book “has been received well by my journalist colleagues and people who have read it and very badly by the court, so I must have achieved something.” By court, she means Sonia Gandhi’s inner circle. “Tavleen is like a fly on the wall that doesn’t get swatted,” says Suhel Seth, a brand consultant and man about town who arranged a book reading for Ms. Singh in Mumbai recently. “She was the first insider to move away from the concentric power circle and squealed,” he says.

In the end, that squealing may not be very significant. Unverifiable gossipy tidbits about Ms. Gandhi aside (shopping sprees, a sable coat redesigned by Fendi), Ms. Singh herself admits that she left out personal details and intimate chats because “a lot of people would be very hurt.” But she says she regrets not taking more notes – which makes it somewhat surprising to hear her cite the example of Robert Vadra, Mrs. Gandhi’s son-in-law and a recent media target over alleged improper land deals, when commenting on the state of the press today. “Robert Vadra didn’t have a chance,” she says. “Once you get on TV channels and you get this wall-to-wall coverage, what is he going to say?”

In her 40 years as a journalist, Ms. Singh’s antisocialist, antigovernment voice has earned her plaudits and criticism alike. She earned her credentials with shoe-leather reporting across India, covering terrorism, wars, famine and elections, but a visceral hatred of dynastic politics — made apparent in the book as well as her weekly columns — is what motivated Ms. Singh to write this book. “I don’t think leadership is genetically passed on,” she says. “I believe the concept of feudal democracy at the very top is emulated. Political ideas are very weak at the grassroots level.”

Her solution? “Political parties should start having elections within the party. I travel a lot, I meet very able people who do not get a chance to be in public life, the kind of people who would come up if you had elections within the party. We could learn a lot from the Americans if we had a kind of system of primaries.”

Always the iconoclast, in her late twenties Ms. Singh fell in love with a married Pakistani. (They had a son together, Aatish, a novelist, now 32.) “It was a doomed relationship from the start,” she says. The man she fell for, Salman Taseer, eventually joined Pakistani politics, becoming governor of Punjab Province in 2008. He was assassinated in 2011. “If I had a choice, I would’ve stayed with Salman and had 10 children and not been a journalist,” Ms. Singh says with a laugh. “I was 29 years old and in love and maybe it would’ve been a terrible mistake, but who knows? It’s not that you make those choices, those choices are made for you.”

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US designates Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra front a ‘terrorist’ group at lightning speed

The US State Department designated the Jabhat al-Nusra militia fighting Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria a foreign terrorist organization today.

The speed with which the US government moved to designate a fairly new group that has never attacked US interests and is engaged in fighting a regime that successive administrations have demonized is evidence of the strange bedfellows and overlapping agendas that make the Syrian civil war so explosive.

The State Department says Jabhat al-Nusra (or the “Nusra Front“) is essentially a wing of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the jihadi group that flourished in Anbar Province after the US invaded to topple the Baathist regime of secular dictator Saddam Hussein. During the Iraq war, Sunni Arab tribesmen living along the Euphrates in eastern Syria flocked to fight with the friends and relatives in the towns along the Euphrates river in Anbar Province.

Think you know the Middle East? Take our geography quiz!

The terrain, both actual and human, is similar on both sides of that border, and the rat lines that kept foreign fighters and money flowing into Iraq from Syria work just as well in reverse. Now, the jihadis who fought and largely lost against the Shiite political ascendancy in Iraq are flocking to eastern Syria to repay a debt of gratitude in a battle that looks more likely to succeed every day.

The Nusra Front has gone from victory to victory in eastern Syria and has shown signs of both significant funding and greater military prowess than the average citizens’ militia, with veterans of fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya among its numbers.

The US of course aided the fight in Libya to bring down Muammar Qaddafi. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the chance to fight and kill Americans was the major drawing card.

In Iraq, the US toppled a Baathist dictatorship dominated by Sunni Arabs, opening the door for the political dominance of Iraq’s Shiite Arab majority and the fury of the country’s Sunni jihadis. In Syria, a Baathist regime dominated by the tiny Alawite sect (a long-ago offshoot of Shiite Islam) risks being brought down by the Sunni majority. Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is in the odd position of now rooting for a Baathist regime to survive, frightened that a religiously inspired Sunni regime may replace Assad and potentially destabilize parts of his country from Haditha in Anbar’s far west to the northern city of Mosul.

For the US, the situation is more complicated still. The Obama administration appears eager for Assad to fall, but is also afraid of what might replace him, not least because of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. If the regime collapses, the aftermath is sure to be chaotic, much as it was in Libya, where arms stores were looted throughout the country. The presence of VX and sarin nerve gas, and the fear of Al Qaeda aligned militants getting their hands on it, has the US considering sending in troops to secure the weapons.

That’s the context in which today’s designation was made – part of an overall effort to shape the Syrian opposition to US liking, and hopefully have influence in the political outcome if and when Assad’s regime collapses. But while the US has been trying to find a government or leadership in waiting among Syrian exiles, Nusra has been going from strength to strength. Aaron Zelin, who tracks jihadi groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, notes in a recent piece for Foreign Policy that 20 out of the 48 “martyrdom” notices posted on Al Qaeda forums for the Syria war were made by people claiming to be members of Nusra.

Zelin writes that it’s highly unusual for the US to designate as a terrorist group anyone who hasn’t attempted an attack on the US. In fact, the US only designated the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan, which had been involved in attacks on US troops there for over a decade, this September.

His guess as to why the US took such an unusual step?

The U.S. administration, in designating Jabhat al-Nusra, is likely to argue that the group is an outgrowth of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). While there is not much open-source evidence of this, classified material may offer proof — and there is certainly circumstantial evidence that Jabhat al-Nusra operates as a branch of the ISI.

Getting Syria’s rebels to disavow Jabhat al-Nusra may not be an easy task, however. As in Iraq, jihadists have been some of the most effective and audacious fighters against the Assad regime, garnering respect from other rebel groups in the process. Jabhat al-Nusra seems to have learned from the mistakes of al Qaeda in Iraq: It has not attacked civilians randomly, nor has it shown wanton disregard for human life by publicizing videos showing the beheading of its enemies. Even if its views are extreme, it is getting the benefit of the doubt from other insurgents due to its prowess on the battlefield.

Will it hurt the group’s support inside Syria? It’s hard to see how. The US hasn’t formally explained its logic yet, but it’s hard to see how that will matter either. The rebellion against Assad has raged for almost two years now and the country’s fighters are eager for victory, and revenge. The US has done little to militarily assist the rebellion, and fighters have been happy to take support where they can get it.

Most of the money or weapons flowing into the country for rebels has come from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and some of that support, of course, has ended up in the hands of Islamist militias like Nusra.

Usually the US doesn’t like support flowing to its designated terrorist organizations, and leans on countries like Saudi Arabia to cut off support. But in this case, a doctrinaire enforcement of its will could look like helping Assad (who has insisted everyone fighting his government is a terrorist since long before Nusra even existed).

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Hayden Panettiere Splits with Scotty McKnight

12/10/2012 at 07:50 PM EST

Hayden Panettiere and Scotty McKnight

Splash News Online

Is there a tear in her beer?

Nashville star Hayden Panettiere has broken up with her boyfriend of more than a year, New York Jets wide receiver Scotty McKnight, a source confirms to PEOPLE.

But the split doesn't appear to be the stuff of a sad country song. The actress, 23, is still friends with McKnight, 24, and one source tells TMZ that their pals wouldn't be surprised if they got back together.

This is Panettiere's second go at a relationship with an athlete. Before dating McKnight she was with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko for about two years.
– Julie Jordan

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New tests could hamper food outbreak detection

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's about to get faster and easier to diagnose food poisoning, but that progress for individual patients comes with a downside: It could hurt the nation's ability to spot and solve dangerous outbreaks.

Next-generation tests that promise to shave a few days off the time needed to tell whether E. coli, salmonella or other foodborne bacteria caused a patient's illness could reach medical laboratories as early as next year. That could allow doctors to treat sometimes deadly diseases much more quickly — an exciting development.

The problem: These new tests can't detect crucial differences between different subtypes of bacteria, as current tests can. And that fingerprint is what states and the federal government use to match sick people to a contaminated food. The older tests might be replaced by the new, more efficient ones.

"It's like a forensics lab. If somebody says a shot was fired, without the bullet you don't know where it came from," explained E. coli expert Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that losing the ability to literally take a germ's fingerprint could hamper efforts to keep food safe, and the agency is searching for solutions. According to CDC estimates, 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and 3,000 die.

"These improved tests for diagnosing patients could have the unintended consequence of reducing our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks, ultimately causing more people to become sick," said Dr. John Besser of the CDC.

That means outbreaks like the salmonella illnesses linked this fall to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter might not be identified that quickly — or at all.

It all comes down to what's called a bacterial culture — whether labs grow a sample of a patient's bacteria in an old-fashioned petri dish, or skip that step because the new tests don't require it.

Here's the way it works now: Someone with serious diarrhea visits the doctor, who gets a stool sample and sends it to a private testing laboratory. The lab cultures the sample, growing larger batches of any lurking bacteria to identify what's there. If disease-causing germs such as E. coli O157 or salmonella are found, they may be sent on to a public health laboratory for more sophisticated analysis to uncover their unique DNA patterns — their fingerprints.

Those fingerprints are posted to a national database, called PulseNet, that the CDC and state health officials use to look for food poisoning trends.

There are lots of garden-variety cases of salmonella every year, from runny eggs to a picnic lunch that sat out too long. But if a few people in, say, Baltimore have salmonella with the same molecular signature as some sick people in Cleveland, it's time to investigate, because scientists might be able narrow the outbreak to a particular food or company.

But culture-based testing takes time — as long as two to four days after the sample reaches the lab, which makes for a long wait if you're a sick patient.

What's in the pipeline? Tests that could detect many kinds of germs simultaneously instead of hunting one at a time — and within hours of reaching the lab — without first having to grow a culture. Those tests are expected to be approved as early as next year.

This isn't just a science debate, said Shari Shea, food safety director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

If you were the patient, "you'd want to know how you got sick," she said.

PulseNet has greatly improved the ability of regulators and the food industry to solve those mysteries since it was launched in the mid-1990s, helping to spot major outbreaks in ground beef, spinach, eggs and cantaloupe in recent years. Just this fall, PulseNet matched 42 different salmonella illnesses in 20 different states that were eventually traced to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter.

Food and Drug Administration officials who visited the plant where the peanut butter was made found salmonella contamination all over the facility, with several of the plant samples matching the fingerprint of the salmonella that made people sick. A New Mexico-based company, Sunland Inc., recalled hundreds of products that were shipped to large retailers all over the country, including Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.

The source of those illnesses probably would have remained a mystery without the national database, since there weren't very many illnesses in any individual state.

To ensure that kind of crucial detective work isn't lost, the CDC is asking the medical community to send samples to labs to be cultured even when they perform a new, non-culture test.

But it's not clear who would pay for that extra step. Private labs only can perform the tests that a doctor orders, noted Dr. Jay M. Lieberman of Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's largest testing labs.

A few first-generation non-culture tests are already available. When private labs in Wisconsin use them, they frequently ship leftover samples to the state lab, which grows the bacteria itself. But as more private labs switch over after the next-generation rapid tests arrive, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be hard-pressed to keep up with that extra work before it can do its main job — fingerprinting the bugs, said deputy director Dr. Dave Warshauer.

Stay tuned: Research is beginning to look for solutions that one day might allow rapid and in-depth looks at food poisoning causes in the same test.

"As molecular techniques evolve, you may be able to get the information you want from non-culture techniques," Lieberman said.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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European shares dip, euro steady ahead of ZEW, Fed

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares and Italian bonds edged lower on Tuesday as political turmoil in Italy weighed on confidence, but moves were subdued as investors waited for German confidence data later and the U.S. Federal Reserve's end of year meeting.

Following some disappointing euro zone data this month, the ZEW survey of German business sentiment will be released at 1000 GMT (5 a.m. EST), with investors hoping for signs of a pick up in confidence.

Markets were rattled on Monday by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's announcement he would step down early, and the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 share index <.fteu3> dipped 0.1 percent as trading resumed with concern continuing to weigh.

London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> started mixed, while Milan's FTSE MIB <.ftmib> lost another 0.2 percent following Monday's sharp drop.

"There's no doubt Monti's resignation raised some concerns," said Katsunori Kitakura, associate general manager of market making at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.

The other main focus for investors is the Federal Reserve meeting on Wednesday. It is expected to extend its asset purchase scheme and commit to buy $45 billion of U.S. debt per month.

On the bond market, German Bund futures opened slightly stronger, with focus for the session likely to be back on Italian politics. Bund futures were 10 ticks higher at 145.71 while Italian bonds continued to hurt, with yields up 7 basis points to 4.88 percent.

Late on Monday Monti had played down market fears over his decision to resign, saying there was no danger of a vacuum ahead of an election in the spring.

The comments helped the euro find some support, as it hovered above a two week low at $1.2945, up around 0.1 percent from late U.S. levels.

(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Damascus Is Tested as Clashes Draw Near

Muzaffar Salman/Reuters

A member of Syria's symphony orchestra ahead of a concert in Damascus in November.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Business has been terrible for Abu Tareq, a taxi driver, so last week, without telling his wife, he agreed to drive a man to the Damascus airport for 10 times the usual rate. But, he said later, he will not be doing that again.

On the airport road, he could hear the crash of artillery and the whiz of sniper fire. Dead rebels and soldiers lay on the roadsides. Abu Tareq saw a dog eating the body of a soldier.

“I will never forget this sight,” said Abu Tareq, 50, who gave only a nickname for safety reasons. “It is the road of the dead.”

Damascus, Syria’s capital, is one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, a touchstone of history and culture.

Through decades of political repression, the city preserved, at least on the surface, an atmosphere of tranquillity, from its wide downtown avenues to the spacious, smooth-stoned courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque and the vine-draped alleys of the Old City, where restaurants and bars tucked between the storehouses of medieval merchants hummed with quiet conversation.

Now, though, the rumble of distant artillery echoes through the city, and its residents are afraid to leave their neighborhoods. Cocooned behind rows of concrete blocks that close off routes to the center, they huddle in fear of a prolonged battle that could bring destruction and division to a place where secular and religious Syrians from many sects — Sunni, Shiite, Alawite, Christian and others — have long lived peacefully.

For more than a week, Syrian rebels and government forces have fought for the airport road, as the military tries to seal off the capital city, the core of President Bashar al-Assad’s power, from a semicircle of rebellious suburbs. Rebels have now kept the pressure on the government for as long as they did during their previous big push toward Damascus last summer. This time, improved supply lines and tactics, some rebels and observers say, may provide a more secure foothold.

But the security forces wield overwhelming firepower, and while they have been unable to subdue the suburbs, some rebel fighters say they lack the intelligence information, arms and communication to advance. That raises the specter of a destructive standoff like the one that has devastated the commercial hub of Aleppo.

“Damascus was the city of jasmine,” Mahmoud, 40, a public-school teacher, said in an interview in the capital. “It is not the city I knew just a few weeks ago.”

Car bombs have ripped through neighborhoods, the targets and attackers only guessed at. Checkpoints choke traffic, turning 20-minute jaunts into three-hour ordeals. Wealthy residents find it quicker and safer to drive to Beirut, Lebanon, for a weekend trip than to the Old City.

Shells have been fired from Mount Qasioun overlooking Damascus, a favorite destination from which to admire the city’s sparkling lights. West of downtown, where the presidential palace stands on a plateau, things are relatively quiet.

Mahmoud, unable to find heating oil and medicine for his sick wife, said his grocer has lectured him daily on shortages and soaring prices. The once-ubiquitous government, he said, now appears to have no role beyond flooding streets with soldiers and security officers, “who are sometimes good and sometimes rude.”

People with roots in other towns have left, he said, “but what about me, who is a Damascene, and has no other city?”

The sense of claustrophobia has grown as rebels have declared the airport a legitimate target and the government has blocked Baghdad Street, a main avenue out of the city. On Sunday, it blocked the highway to Dara’a.

In some outlying neighborhoods and nearby suburbs, the front lines seem to be hardening.

On the route into Qaboun, a neighborhood less than two miles from the center of Damascus, the last government checkpoint in recent days was near the municipal building. Less than a quarter-mile on, rebels controlled the area around the Grand Mosque.

An employee of The New York Times reported from Damascus, and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon. Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from Beirut.

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