9 Apps to Fast-Track Your New Years’ Resolutions






Whether your goal in 2013 is to lose five pounds, manage your finances, or spend more time with friends and family, there are a growing number of apps that fall into the self-help category and can assist you in accomplishing these resolutions.


At Mashable we’ve tested a lot of them out, but we’re still always hearing about new ones. There are a ton of fitness and health apps to chose from, but you might be pleasantly surprised to know they’re not all about weight loss. A device and app called Tinke monitors your stress levels and how deeply you’re breathing. An app called Fig will remind you to drink more water, skip fried foods and take breaks at work to keep you feeling good. Arianna Huffington also released an app called, “GPS for the Soul” that focuses on wellbeing.






[More from Mashable: Time Machine App Transports You Back to 2012]


Other apps can help you organize your social life, make new friends or save money for a vacation.


We’ve compiled a list of apps that can help you accomplish all sorts of goals this year. Check it out and let us know if we missed any that you plan on using in 2013.


[More from Mashable: It’s Easy to Save Videos From Facebook Poke Permanently]


OurGroceries


If you’re trying to eat out less and cook at home more often, make sure you always have a current grocery list at your fingertips. Mashable wrote about several grocery list apps this year. The standout seems to be OurGroceries for Android and iOS. If you have roommates or a significant other, everyone can download the app and sync lists. That way if you’re making a quick after-work trip to the grocery store you’ll not only be able to see the items you added, but also see what they’ve added, too.


Click here to view this gallery.


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, hocus-focus


This story originally published on Mashable here.


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Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his ‘runaway bride’






LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner is celebrating the new year as a married man once again.


The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his “runaway bride,” Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year’s Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old “Playmate of the Month” in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.






Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year’s Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.


The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner’s been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.


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Gambian leader says to build herbal AIDS-cure hospital






BANJUL (Reuters) – AIDS patients would be offered an herbal cure at a 1,111-bed hospital in Gambia that the president said on Tuesday he plans to build despite medical concerns the treatment is dangerous.


President Yahya Jammeh said in 2007 he had found a remedy of boiled herbs to cure AIDS, stirring anger among Western medical experts who claimed he was giving false hope to the sick.






“With this project coming to fruition, we intend to treat 10,000 HIV/AIDS patients every six months through natural medicine,” Jammeh said in his New Year’s address, adding that he expected the 1,111-bed hospital to open in 2015.


The World Health Organisation and the United Nations have said Jammeh’s HIV/AIDS treatment is alarming mainly because patients are required to cease their anti-retroviral drugs, making them more prone to infection.


Jammeh said in October that 68 HIV/AIDS patients undergoing his herbal remedy had been cured and discharged, the seventh batch since the treatments began five years ago.


Other African leaders have drawn criticism for extolling the power of natural remedies to combat AIDS.


The administration of former South African President Thabo Mbeki was ridiculed for denying there was a link between HIV and AIDS while prescribing meaningless treatments such as beet root instead of internationally proven medicines.


The HIV rate in Gambia is relatively low compared to other African states, with 2 percent of the country’s roughly 1.8 million people infected, according to the United Nations.


Jammeh came to power in Gambia, a sliver of land on Africa’s west coast that is popular with sun-seeking European tourists, in a bloodless military coup in 1994.


He is accused by activists of human rights abuses during his rule, and most recently drew international criticism for executing nine death-row inmates by firing squad.


(Reporting by Pap Saine; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Michael Roddy)


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GOP balks at lack of spending cuts, House could vote tonight


House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., left, with Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, head into a closed-door …Updated 7:27 pm ET


Republican House leaders are giving their fractious caucus a choice: Try to amend a fiscal cliff compromise passed in the Senate early Tuesday morning or go for a straight up-or-down vote on the original deal.


Either way, it apppeared the fate of the measure would be known Tuesday night.


A hard-fought bipartisan compromise hatched by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to spare all but the richest Americans from painful income-tax hikes teetered on the edge of collapse on Tuesday as angry House Republicans balked at the package’s lack of spending cuts.


The legislation sailed through the Senate shortly after 2 a.m. by a lopsided 89-8 margin. But it landed with a thud in the House, where Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor surprised lawmakers by coming out flatly against the deal.


Amending the Senate plan could jettison the entire deal.


At a 5:15 p.m. closed-door meeting, Cantor and Republican House Speaker John Boehner  “cautioned members about the risk in such a strategy,” according to a GOP leadership aide. House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, emerging from the gathering, bluntly told reporters “it’s pretty obvious” that amending the legislation and sending it back to the Senate would kill it. Democrats and Republicans in the upper chamber had signaled that lawmakers there would not take up a modified version of what was already a difficult deal.


The resulting pressure on GOP leaders was immense: Absent action to avert the fiscal cliff, Americans would face hefty across-the-board income-tax hikes, while indiscriminate spending cuts risked devastating domestic and defense programs. Skittish financial markets were watching the dysfunction in Washington carefully amid warnings that going off the so-called cliff could plunge the fragile economy into a new recession.


House Republicans appeared to be rejecting a bipartisan compromise that Boehner himself asked the Senate to negotiate without him, leaving the party likely facing the lion’s share of the blame from angry voters. And final passage could require a majority of Democratic votes, a tricky thing for Boehner two days before he faces reelection as speaker.


Time was running short for another reason: A new Congress will take office at noon on Thursday, forcing efforts to craft a compromise by the current Congress back to the drawing board.


Under the compromise arrangement, taxes would rise on income above $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for households, while exemptions and deductions the wealthiest Americans use to reduce their tax bill would face new limits. The accord would also raise the taxes paid on large inheritances from 35% to 40% for estates over $5 million. And it would extend by one year unemployment benefits for some two million Americans. It would also prevent cuts in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients and spare tens of millions of Americans who otherwise would have been hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax. And it would extend some stimulus-era tax breaks championed by progressives.


The middle class will still see its taxes go up: The final deal did not include an extension of the payroll tax holiday. A report released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office Tuesday complicated matters further. It said that the Senate-passed compromise would add nearly $4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.


Efforts to modify the first installment of $1.2 trillion in cuts to domestic and defense programs over 10 years -- the other portion of the “fiscal cliff,” known as sequestration -- had proved a sticking point late in the game. Democrats had sought a year-long freeze but ultimately caved to Republican pressure and signed on to just a two-month delay while broader deficit-reduction talks continue.


That would put the next major battle over spending cuts right around the time that the White House and its Republican foes are battling it out over whether to raise the country's debt limit. Republicans have vowed to push for more spending cuts, equivalent to the amount of new borrowing. Obama has vowed not to negotiate as he did in 2011, when a bruising fight threatened the first-ever default on America's obligations and resulted in the first-ever downgrade of the country's credit rating. Biden sent that message to Democrats in Congress, two senators said.


The day-long political drama flared up when Cantor told House Republicans meeting behind closed doors Tuesday morning that he could not back the bill in its current form, aides and lawmakers leaving the discussions said. With conservatives already ready to oppose the measure over its lack of spending cuts, the majority leader’s bombshell spelled potential doom for the legislation.


“The Speaker and Leader laid out options to the members and listened to feedback,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said in a statement about the discussion. “The lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members in today’s meeting.”


As House Republicans raged at the bill, key House Democrats emerging from a closed-door meeting with Biden expressed support for the compromise and pressed Boehner for a vote on the legislation as currently written.


“Our Speaker has said when the Senate acts, we will have a vote in the House. That is what he said, that is what we expect, that is what the American people deserve…a straight up-or-down vote,” Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters.


Conservative activist organizations like the anti-tax Club for Growth warned lawmakers to oppose the compromise. The Club charged in a message to Congress that “this bill raises taxes immediately with the promise of cutting spending later.”


Efforts to modify the first installment of $1.2 trillion in cuts to domestic and defense programs over 10 years -- the other portion of the “fiscal cliff,” known as sequestration -- had proved a sticking point late in the game. Democrats had sought a year-long freeze but ultimately caved to Republican pressure and signed on to just a two-month delay while broader deficit-reduction talks continue.


That would put the next major battle over spending cuts right around the time that the White House and its Republican foes are battling it out over whether to raise the country's debt limit. Republicans have vowed to push for more spending cuts, equivalent to the amount of new borrowing. Obama has vowed not to negotiate as he did in 2011, when a bruising fight threatened the first-ever default on America's obligations and resulted in the first-ever downgrade of the country's credit rating. Biden sent that message to Democrats in Congress, two senators said.


“This agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” President Barack Obama said in a written statement shortly after the Senate vote.


There were signs that the 2016 presidential race shaped the outcome in the Senate. Republican Senator Marco Rubio, widely thought to have his eye on his party’s nomination, voted no. Republican Senator Rand Paul, who could take up the libertarian mantle of his father Ron Paul, did as well.


Biden's visit -- his second to Congressional Democrats in two days -- aimed to soothe concerns about the bill and about the coming battles on deficit reduction.


“This is a simple case of trying to Make sure that the perfect does not become the enemy of the good,” said Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, one of the chamber’s most steadfast liberals. “Nobody’s going to like everything about it.”


Asked whether House progressives, who had hoped for a lower income threshold, would back the bill, Cummings said he could not predict but stressed: “I am one of the most progressive members, and I will vote for it.”



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Pope marks end of difficult year, notes God’s good






VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI marked the end of a difficult year Monday by saying that despite all the death and injustice in the world, goodness prevails.


Benedict celebrated New Year’s Eve with a vespers service in St. Peter’s Basilica to give thanks for 2012 and look ahead to 2013. He appeared tired during the service and used a cane afterward — an indication that the busy Christmas season may be taking a toll on the 85-year-old Benedict.






In his homily, Benedict said it’s tough to remember that goodness prevails when bad news — death, violence and injustice — “makes more noise than good.” He said taking time to meditate in prolonged reflection and prayer can help “find healing from the inevitable wounds of daily life.”


This past year was full of highs and lows for the pope, including a successful trip to Mexico and Cuba but also the betrayal of his butler, convicted in October of stealing Benedict’s personal papers and leaking them to a journalist.


After the service, Benedict was brought out in a covered car to pray before the Vatican’s main nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square. Walking with a cane in the chilly piazza, Benedict chatted animatedly with the artist who crafted the scene, which recreated an entire village from the poor, southern Italian region of Basilicata which donated this year’s crèche.


The Vatican gladly accepted Basilicata’s donation after the €550,000 price tag the Vatican paid for the 2009 nativity scene was revealed in the documentation leaked by Benedict’s ex-butler Paolo Gabriele.


Gabriele was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He received a pre-Christmas papal pardon and is expected to soon leave his Vatican City apartment for a new home and job elsewhere.


On Tuesday morning, Benedict celebrates a New Year’s Day Mass, which the Catholic Church celebrates as its world day of peace.


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Ban on demanding Facebook passwords among new 2013 state laws






CHICAGO (Reuters) – Employers in California and Illinois will be prohibited from demanding access to workers’ password-protected social networking accounts and teachers in Oregon will be required to report suspected student bullies thanks to new laws taking effect in 2013.


In all, more than 400 measures were enacted at the state level during 2012 and will become law in the new year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).






Some of the statutes, which deal with everything from consumer protection to gun control and healthcare, take effect at the stroke of midnight. Others will not kick in until later in the year.


The raft of measures includes a new abortion restriction in New Hampshire, public-employee pension reform in California and Alabama, same-sex marriage in Maryland, and a requirement that private insurers in Alaska cover autism in kids and young adults, NCSL said.


In New Hampshire, a rarely used form of late-term abortion will become illegal except to save the life of the mother – and even then only if two doctors from separate hospitals certify the procedure is medically necessary.


John Lynch, the state’s outgoing Democratic governor, had vetoed the measure, saying it would threaten the lives of women in rural areas. But the state’s Republican-controlled legislature later overrode him.


In California and Illinois, laws that take effect at 12:01 a.m. local time will make it illegal for bosses to request social networking passwords or non-public online account information from their employees or job applicants.


Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed a similar measure into law earlier this month that took effect immediately. The Michigan law also penalizes educational institutions for dismissing or failing to admit a student who does not provide passwords and other account information used to access private internet and email accounts, including social networks like Facebook and Twitter.


But workers and job seekers in all three states will still need to be careful what they post online: Employers may continue to use publicly available social networking information. So inappropriate pictures, tweets and other social media indiscretions can still come back to haunt them.


Gun violence – in places where it’s all too common, such as Chicago, and in places where it’s unexpected, such as Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut – was big news in 2012. But only a handful of new state firearms laws are set to take effect in 2013.


In Michigan, the definition of a “pistol” under the law will now include any firearm less than 26 inches in length. The new definition encompasses some rifles with folding stocks and will make the weapons subject to the same restrictions as pistols.


In Illinois, certain guns currently regulated by state law, including paintball guns, will be excluded from the definition of a firearm and participants in military re-enactments will be exempt from some weapons laws.


Another big story in 2012 was the effort by lawmakers in a number of cash-strapped states to put their public employee pension funds on a sounder financial footing.


In California and Alabama, reforms designed to begin to address the unfunded liabilities of those retirement systems will take effect in 2013.


Among the other new laws on the books in 2013:


* In California, prison workers and peace officers will now be prohibited from having sex with inmates and prisoners in transport.


* In Illinois, sex offenders will be prohibited from distributing candy on Halloween, or playing Santa or the Easter Bunny.


* In Oregon, employers won’t be allowed to advertise a job vacancy if they won’t consider applicants who are currently out of work.


* In Kentucky, residents will be prohibited from releasing feral or wild hogs back into the wild and Illinois will ban the possession and sale of shark fins.


* And in Florida, the term “motor vehicle” will no longer apply to the specialized all-terrain vehicles with over-sized tires known as “swamp buggies” that are popular in some parts of the state.


(Reporting by James B. Kelleher; Editing by Greg McCune and Nick Zieminski)


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Kardashian, West feel ‘blessed’ over baby news






ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are feeling lucky about their first child together.


“It’s true,” the 32-year-old reality TV star said in a statement on her site Monday. “Kanye and I are expecting a baby. We feel so blessed and lucky and wish that in addition to both of our families, his mom and my dad could be here to celebrate this special time with us.”






Kardashian’s father, Robert Kardashian, died in 2003. West’s mother, Donda West, died in 2007.


Kardashian added in the blog post that she was “looking forward to great new beginnings in 2013 and to starting a family.”


The 35-year-old rapper revealed to a crowd of more than 5,000 in song form at a concert Sunday that his girlfriend is pregnant. Kardashian was in the crowd at Revel Resort’s Ovation Hall with her mother, Kris Jenner, and West’s mentor and best friend, Jay-Z.


The news instantly went viral online, with thousands posting and commenting on the expecting couple.


Most of the Kardashian clan tweeted about the news, including Kim’s sisters. Kourtney Kardashian wrote: “Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!”


West told concertgoers to congratulate his “baby mom” and that this was the “most amazing thing.”


Representatives for West and Kardashian didn’t immediately respond to emails about the pregnancy.


The rapper and reality TV star went public with their relationship in March.


Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.


West’s Sunday-night show was his third consecutive performance at Revel. He took the stage for nearly two hours, performing hits like “Good Life,” ”Jesus Walks” and “Clique” in an all-white ensemble with two bandmates.


Kardashian is expected to spend New Year’s Eve at public appearance at a Las Vegas nightclub.


___


AP Writer Bianca Roach contributed to this report.


___


Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin . Follow Bianca Roach at http://twitter.com/B__Roach


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Combative Obama knocks Republicans, says fiscal deal in sight






WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, in remarks that needled Republicans and resembled a victory lap, said on Monday an agreement with Congress to avoid a “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts was in sight.


The Democratic president appeared at a White House event in the early afternoon with cheering supporters to press for lawmakers to complete a deal that would extend tax cuts for the middle class, raise rates for high earners and extend unemployment insurance for people seeking work.






“Today it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year’s tax hike is within sight, but it is not done,” Obama said. “There are still issues left to resolve, but we’re hopeful that Congress can get it done.”


Hours later, however, a Democratic aide said skeptical senators from the president’s own party had sought a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden to discuss the deal, and the House of Representatives appeared unlikely to hold a vote on Monday, suggesting the country would – at least technically – go over the cliff anyway.


Obama, who won re-election in November partially on a promise to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans, made a point of noting in his remarks that the opposing party came around to his position on raising rates.


“Keep in mind that just last month Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. Obviously, the agreement that’s currently being discussed would raise those rates and raise them permanently,” he said to applause.


Obama knocked Congress for waiting to the last minute to resolve the fiscal cliff problem and expressed, with some disdain, his regret that a bigger deal was not possible.


“My preference would have been to solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement, a bigger deal, a grand bargain,” he said. “But with this Congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time.”


‘SHARED SACRIFICE’


Obama’s words and tone annoyed Republican lawmakers, whose support he is seeking for the deal to be done.


“I’m disappointed that the president took the eve of what might be a bipartisan deal to take a swipe at Congress once again,” said Republican Representative Darrell Issa on CNN.


“That’s not the way presidents should lead,” said Republican Senator John McCain, Obama’s rival in the 2008 election.


Obama had other jabs for Republicans.


While repeating his call for deficit reduction that did not hurt senior citizens and middle class families, Obama noted pointedly that he had won the election.


“If we’re going to be serious about deficit reduction and debt reduction, then it’s going to have to be a matter of shared sacrifice – at least as long as I’m president,” he said. “And I’m going to be president for the next four years, I think.”


The outlines of a deal in the U.S. Senate include raising income tax rates for individuals making more than $ 400,000 a year and households making more than $ 450,000 a year, but a sticking point remains on how long to delay automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs, known as a “sequester.”


Obama stressed that a deal over spending cuts had to include tax revenue, echoing pledges he made on the campaign trail.


“Any agreement we have to deal with these automatic spending cuts that are being threatened for next month, those also have to be balanced,” he said.


“That means that revenues have to be part of the equation in turning off the sequester, in eliminating these automatic spending cuts,” he said, adding the same would be true for any future deficit-cutting agreement.


(Additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal, Tabassum Zakaria, Roberta Rampton, David Morgan, David Lawder; editing by Todd Eastham)


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Fiscal cliff tumble looms despite Senate efforts


By Richard Cowan and Roberta Rampton


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States was on track to tumble over the "fiscal cliff" at midnight on Monday, at least for a day, as lawmakers held back from supporting an eleventh-hour plan from Senate leaders to avert severe tax increases and spending cuts.


The U.S. House of Representatives looked unlikely to vote on a Senate "fiscal cliff" plan before midnight, possibly pushing a legislative decision into New Year's Day, when financial markets will be closed.


The plan was heavy on tax increases and light on spending cuts, which was unlikely to appeal to Republicans in the House.


It would raise income taxes on high-income Americans, but leave taxes at current levels for the middle class, a key goal of President Barack Obama.


But there was discontent among Senate Democrats worried that the proposal did not go far enough in taxing the rich. The Democrats asked for a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden to have him explain the talks he was having with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.


"The caucus as a whole is not sold" on the plan, said a Senate Democratic aide. "We just don't have the votes for it."


If Congress fails to act, about $600 billion in tax increases - much steeper than those in the Senate plan - and government-wide spending cuts will begin taking effect after midnight, harsh measures that could lead to a recession.


But lawmakers could still vote for a deal on New Year's Day or later and prevent the worst of the fiscal cliff effects.


The House expects to reconvene on Tuesday at noon, Republican Representative Steven LaTourette said. He added that House members had been told to stay close on Monday evening and that they may be called back to continue negotiations.


Under the Senate plan, income above $450,000 per household or $400,000 per individual would be taxed at 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent. Income up to those levels would be taxed at the current, reduced tax rates put in place under former President George W. Bush.


The Senate plan would raise estate taxes on inherited wealth and permanently fix the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, so that it did not threaten each year to sweep in millions of middle-income Americans for whom it was not intended.


The plan also postpones for two months the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts in defense and domestic programs that are part of the fiscal cliff, Senator John McCain said.


SENATE DEMOCRATS UNSURE


Some Senate Democrats did not like the $450,000 threshold for raising taxes on the rich - they wanted $250,000 - or the higher threshold for raising estate taxes. Democrats also are upset there is no agreement yet to put off the first round of $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts.


Republicans already are pushing for switching those across-the-board cuts to savings in the Medicare and Social Security healthcare and retirement programs and threatening to block a debt limit increase in February unless they get their way. But that is a fight that would most likely play out in January and February.


Some Senate Democrats aides were dispirited that Biden, a fellow Democrat, had gone further than they wanted in the fiscal cliff talks, just as he did in December 2010 when all Bush tax cuts were extended for two years.


Shortly after the plan emerged, Obama said agreement was within sight, but he sounded a cautious note.


"There are still issues to resolve, but we're hopeful that Congress can get it done, but it's not done," Obama, a Democrat, said at a White House event.


U.S. stocks rose on the day, with the market closing before the latest news broke about the House not voting. The benchmark Dow Jones industrial average closed up 1.3 percent at 13,104.


Even if the country tumbles over the cliff, legislative action afterward could soften the blow.


Final legislation can be backdated to January 1, for instance, said law firm K&L Gates partner Mary Burke Baker, who spent decades at the Internal Revenue Service.


"The important date is the date in the legislative language ... no matter what day the Senate or House pass the law, or the date the president signs it," she said.


Former Obama administration Treasury Department tax official Michael Mundaca agreed, although he said there would likely be delays in filing for many taxpayers as the IRS gets its computers into gear.


A deal on Tuesday will likely leave unsolved the issue of the "debt ceiling," which caps how much debt the federal government can hold.


Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a letter to congressional leaders that the government would suspend some investments in pension and health benefit funds for federal workers beginning on Monday in a move that allows it to keep borrowing for the meantime.


(Additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal, Tabassum Zakaria, Kim Dixon, Jeff Mason, Rachelle Younglai and David Morgan, Writing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)



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Pakistan militants kill 41 in mass execution, attack on Shi’ites






PESHWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani militants, who have escalated attacks in recent weeks, killed at least 41 people in two separate incidents, officials said on Sunday, challenging assertions that military offensives have broken the back of hardline Islamist groups.


The United States has long pressured nuclear-armed ally Pakistan to crack down harder on both homegrown militants groups such as the Taliban and others which are based on its soil and attack Western forces in Afghanistan.






In the north, 21 men working for a government-backed paramilitary force were executed overnight after they were kidnapped last week, a provincial official said.


Twenty Shi’ite pilgrims died and 24 were wounded, meanwhile, when a car bomb targeted their bus convoy as it headed toward the Iranian border in the southwest, a doctor said.


New York-based Human Rights Watch has noted more than 320 Shias killed this year in Pakistan and said attacks were on the rise. It said the government’s failure to catch or prosecute attackers suggested it was “indifferent” to the killings.


Pakistan, seen as critical to U.S. efforts to stabilize the region before NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, denies allegations that it supports militant groups like the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network.


Afghan officials say Pakistan seems more genuine than ever about promoting peace in Afghanistan.


At home, it faces a variety of highly lethal militant groups that carry out suicide bombings, attack police and military facilities and launch sectarian attacks like the one on the bus in the southwest.


Witnesses said a blast targeted their three buses as they were overtaking a car about 60 km (35 miles) west of Quetta, capital of sparsely populated Baluchistan province.


“The bus next to us caught on fire immediately,” said pilgrim Hussein Ali, 60. “We tried to save our companions, but were driven back by the intensity of the heat.”


Twenty people had been killed and 24 wounded, said an official at Mastung district hospital.


CONCERN OVER EXTREMIST SUNNI GROUPS


International attention has focused on al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.


But Pakistani intelligence officials say extremist Sunni groups, lead by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) are emerging as a major destabilizing force in a campaign designed to topple the government.


Their strategy now, the officials say, is to carry out attacks on Shi’ites to create the kind of sectarian tensions that pushed countries like Iraq to the brink of civil war.


As elections scheduled for next year approach, Pakistanis will be asking what sort of progress their leaders have made in the fight against militancy and a host of other issues, such as poverty, official corruption and chronic power cuts.


Pakistan’s Taliban have carried out a series of recent bold attacks, as military officials point to what they say is a power struggle in the group’s leadership revolving around whether it should ease attacks on the Pakistani state and join groups fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.


The Taliban denies a rift exists among its leaders.


In the attack in the northwest, officials said they had found the bodies of 21 men kidnapped from their checkpoints outside the provincial capital of Peshawar on Thursday. The men were executed one by one.


“They were tied up and blindfolded,” Naveed Anwar, a senior administration official, said by telephone.


“They were lined up and shot in the head,” said Habibullah Arif, another local official, also by telephone.


One man was shot and seriously wounded but survived, the officials said. He was in critical condition and being treated at a local hospital. Another had escaped before the shootings.


Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan claimed responsibility for the attacks.


“We killed all the kidnapped men after a council of senior clerics gave a verdict for their execution. We didn’t make any demand for their release because we don’t spare any prisoners who are caught during fighting,” he said.


The powerful military has clawed back territory from the Taliban, but the kidnap and executions underline the insurgents’ ability to mount high-profile, deadly attacks in major cities.


This month, suicide bombers attacked Peshawar’s airport on December 15 and a bomb killed a senior Pashtun nationalist politician and eight other people at a rally on December 22.


(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN and Gul Yousufzai in QUETTA; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Michael Georgy and Ron Popeski)


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Title Post: Pakistan militants kill 41 in mass execution, attack on Shi’ites
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