27 JUVENILE INMATES BOLT PERU JAIL
LIMA: At least 27 inmates at a notorious juvenile detention facility in Peru escaped, some staging a riot on New Year’s Eve as guards prepared festivities to ring in 2013, officials said.

A first group of 13 made a run for freedom on New Year’s Eve, followed by 14 others who escaped late Tuesday when a tank truck entered the prison, prosecutor Jorge Sanz said. Police have recaptured eight of the inmates. The warden was fired and several guards were transferred to another facility while an investigation is being launched to determine if the prisoners got inside help, a statement from the Peruvian court system said. The escape appears to have been led by a minor known as “Gringasho,” a hitman blamed for more than 10 murders

JAPAN’S EMPEROR EXPRESSES SYMPATHY FOR DISASTER VICTIMS
TOKYO: Japan’s Emperor Akihito delivered his traditional New Year address on Wednesday, reiterating his sympathy for victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster. “I was encouraged to see many people visit the affected areas and provide support in the wake of the East Japan Great Earthquake,” Akihito told more than 50,000 cheering people who gathered at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. The 9.0-magnitude quake and monster tsunami ravaged the country’s northeast, killing some 19,000 people and crippling a nuclear power plant, which leaked radiation into the environment.

ANTIDEPRESSANTS DON’T RAISE PREGNANCY RISKS
WASHINGTON, D.C.: The use of antidepressants during pregnancy is not linked to a higher overall risk of stillbirth and death in newborns, a study said, confounding a long-held opposing view of such drugs. The Swedish study of more than 1.6 million births in five Nordic countries included nearly 30,000 women who had filled in a prescription for an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) during pregnancy. The researchers found that the 1.79 percent of mothers exposed to an SSRI had higher rates of and postneonatal death than those who did not. But the slightly higher rates were attributed to the severity of the underlying psychiatric disease—usually depression—rather than its treatment. Cigarette smoking and the mother’s advanced age were also linked to higher deaths. AFP