Thirty hostages reported killed in Algeria assault


ALGIERS (Reuters) - Thirty hostages and at least 11 Islamist militants were killed on Thursday when Algerian forces stormed a desert gas plant in a bid to free many dozens of Western and local captives, an Algerian security source said.


Details remained scant - including for Western governments, some of which did little to disguise irritation at being kept in the dark by Algeria before the raid and its bloody outcome.


Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among at least seven foreigners killed, the source told Reuters. Eight of the dead hostages were Algerian. The nationalities of the rest, as well as of perhaps dozens more who escaped, were unclear.


Americans, Norwegians, Romanians and an Austrian have also been mentioned by their governments as having been captured.


Underlining the view of African and Western leaders that they face a multinational, al Qaeda-linked insurgency across the Sahara - a conflict that prompted France to send troops to neighboring Mali last week - the official source said only two of the 11 dead militants were Algerian, including their leader.


After an operation that appeared to go on for some eight hours, after Algeria refused the kidnappers' demand to leave the country with their hostages, the bodies of three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman were found.


So too was that of Taher Ben Cheneb, an Algerian whom the security official described as a prominent jihadist commander in the Sahara.


The gunmen who seized the important gas facility deep in the desert before dawn on Wednesday had been demanding France halt its week-old offensive against Islamist rebels in Mali.


French President Francois Hollande said the hostage drama, which has raised fears of further militant attacks, showed that he was right to send more than 1,000 French troops to Mali to back up a West African force in support of Mali's government.


A Algerian government spokesman, who confirmed only that an unspecified number of hostages had died, said the tough response to a "diehard" attitude by the militants showed that, as during its bloody civil war against Islamists in the 1990s, Algiers would not negotiate or stand for "blackmail" from "terrorists".


SECURITY IN QUESTION


The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions, however, over the reliability of what was thought to be strong security.


Foreign companies said they were pulling non-essential staff out of the country, which has only in recent years begun to seem stable after a decade of blood-letting.


"The embarrassment for the government is great," said Azzedine Layachi, an Algerian political scientist at New York's St John's University. "The heart of Algeria's economy is in the south. where the oil and gas fields are. For this group to have attacked there, in spite of tremendous security, is remarkable."


Algiers, whose leaders have long had frosty relations with the former colonial power France and other Western countries, may also have some explaining to do over its tactics in putting an end to a hostage crisis whose scale was comparable to few in recent decades bar those involving Chechen militants in Russia.


Communication Minister Mohamed Said sounded unapologetic, however. "When the terrorist group insisted on leaving the facility, taking the foreign hostages with them to neighboring states, the order was issued to special units to attack the position where the terrorists were entrenched," he told state news agency APS, which said some 600 local workers were freed.


A local source told Reuters six foreign hostages had been killed along with eight of their captors when troops fired on a vehicle being used by the gunmen at the Tigantourine plant.


The standoff began when gunmen calling themselves the Battalion of Blood stormed the facility early on Wednesday morning. They said they were holding 41 foreigners.


In a rare eyewitness account of Wednesday's raid, a local man who had escaped from the facility told Reuters the militants appeared to have inside knowledge of the layout of the complex and used the language of radical Islam.


"The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels," Abdelkader, 53, said by telephone from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. "'We will kill them,' they said."


Mauritanian agency ANI and Qatar-based Al Jazeera said earlier that 34 captives and 15 militants had been killed when government forces fired at a vehicle from helicopters.


BAD NEWS EXPECTED


British Prime Minister David Cameron said people should prepare for bad news about the hostages. He earlier called his Algerian counterpart to express his concern at what he called a "very grave and serious" situation, his spokesman said.


"The Algerians are aware that we would have preferred to have been consulted in advance," the spokesman added.


Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said he had been told by his Algerian counterpart that the action had started at around noon. He said they had tried to find a solution through the night, but that it had not worked.


"The Algerian prime minister said they felt they had no choice but to go in now," he said.


The incident dramatically raises the stakes in the French military campaign in neighboring Mali, where hundreds of French paratroopers and marines are launching a ground offensive against Islamist rebels after air strikes began last week.


"What is happening in Algeria justifies all the more the decision I made in the name of France to intervene in Mali in line with the U.N. charter," Hollande said, adding that things seemed to have taken a "dramatic" turn.


He said earlier that an unspecified number of French nationals were among the hostages. A French national was also among the hostage takers, a local source told Reuters. A large number of people from the former French colony live in France.


Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said the kidnappers were loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran Islamist guerrilla who fought in Afghanistan and set up his own group in the Sahara after falling out with other local al Qaeda leaders.


A holy warrior-cum-smuggler dubbed "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence and "Mister Marlboro" by some locals for his illicit cigarette-running business, Belmokhtar's links to those who seized towns across northern Mali last year are unclear.


Britain said one of its citizens was killed in the initial storming on Wednesday and "a number" of others were held.


The militants had said seven Americans were among their hostages. The White House said it believed Americans were among those held but U.S. officials could not confirm the number.


"This is an ongoing situation and we are seeking clarity," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.


FOREIGN FIRMS


Norway's Statoil, which runs the plant with BP of Britain and Algeria's state energy company, said it had no word on nine of its Norwegian staff who had been held, but that three Algerian employees were now free.


BP said some of its staff were being held but would not say how many or their nationalities.


Japanese media said five workers from Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp. were held, a number the company did not confirm. The Irish government said one Irish hostage was freed.


Hollande has received public backing from Western and African allies who fear that al Qaeda, flush with men and arms from the defeated forces of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, is building a desert haven in Mali, a poor country helpless to combat fighters who seized its northern oasis towns last year.


However, there is also some concern in Washington and other capitals that the French action in Mali could provoke a backlash worse than the initial threat by militants in the remote Sahara.


The militants, communicating through established contacts with media in neighboring Mauritania, said on Wednesday they had dozens of men armed with mortars and anti-aircraft missiles in the compound and had rigged it with explosives.


They condemned Algeria's secularist government for letting French warplanes fly over its territory to Mali and shutting its border to Malian refugees.


The attack in Algeria did not stop France from pressing on with its campaign in Mali. It said on Thursday it now had 1,400 troops on the ground there, and combat was under way against the rebels that it first began targeting from the air last week.


The French action last week came as a surprise but received widespread public international support. Neighboring African countries planning to provide ground troops for a U.N. force by September have said they will move faster to deploy them.


Nigeria, the strongest regional power, sent 162 soldiers on Thursday, the first of an anticipated 906.


A day after launching the campaign in Mali, Hollande also ordered a commando raid in Somalia on Saturday, which failed to free a French hostage held by al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants since 2009. Al Shabaab said on Thursday it had executed the hostage, Denis Allex. France said it believed he had died in the raid.


(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London and Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Writing by Peter Graff, Giles Elgood, Philippa Fletcher and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Kevin Liffey)



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Decree shows Chavez still rules Venezuela: minister






CARACAS: Venezuela's newly appointed foreign minister said Thursday the decree that installed him in office is proof that ailing President Hugo Chavez is still in control of the oil-rich country.

Elias Jaua was named in Venezuela's official government gazette in a decree signed by Chavez, who remains gravely ill in a Havana hospital some five weeks after complications arose during his fourth round of cancer surgery.

"If I am the foreign minister, it is because President Chavez is governing and making decisions," Jaua told a Colombian radio station.

The decree has been heavily criticised by Venezuela's opposition, who have cited its publication as a further reason to demand that the absent president clarify how sick he is and what he can and cannot do.

The decree -- number 9,351 -- was marked "Caracas" and carries the signature of Chavez, who underwent surgery in Cuba on December 11 and has not been seen in public for more than a month.

Opposition lawmaker Carlos Berrizbeitia weighed in on the dispute Thursday, stating there was "reasonable doubt" about whether the signature on the decree was genuine and demanding the government release the original document.

"It is not possible that the president has signed the decree... in Caracas, because everyone knows he is in Havana," Berrizbeitia told local media.

The Venezuelan government has been releasing only minimal information on the condition of Chavez, a 58-year-old former paratrooper who first came to power in 1999 and won a third term in October elections.

He could not attend his scheduled inauguration on January 10 because of his poor health and the swearing-in has been postponed indefinitely.

Many in Venezuela find it hard to believe that Chavez -- a flamboyant and near constant fixture on television and radio -- would not address the nation in some way if he were able to do so.

Despite winning last year's election, Chavez urged his armed forces before leaving Caracas to look out for any attempt, "from outside or from within," to destabilise the country, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves.

The leader's absence, combined with his decision to be treated in secrecy in strictly-controlled Cuba, has fuelled speculation and concern not only about his health but the future of his leftist "Bolivarian Revolution."

- AFP/jc



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Anti-India broadcasts of Iran-Bangladesh radio service worries govt

NEW DELHI: Iran is a strategic partner for India. India and Iran are cooperating in Afghanistan and India has taken considerable flak from the US about maintaining ties with Iran. So is Bangladesh, which is now one of India's most important partners in the neighbourhood.

But for some time now, India's security establishment has been tracking radio broadcasts by IranBangla Radio, a Bengali-language radio service which is part of an Iran-Bangladesh goodwill initiative, broadcasting radio programmes inside Bangladesh. India would normally not have bothered with this except for the fact that the radio service has been consistently putting out anti-India polemic and messaging, which is now a matter of growing concern to the government.

Foreign minister Salman Khurshid is scheduled to visit Dhaka in the coming weeks. Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde is also expected to be in Dhaka to sign a visa and extradition agreement.

India and Bangladesh have worked hard to improve relations with each other in the past couple of years. In fact, this bilateral relationship has seen the greatest degree of investment by the UPA government. Despite the inability of the Indian government to seal a deal on sharing Teesta river waters, the relationship has moved to a different plane.

But there remains a strong constituency that hews to the anti-India line. India is concerned that broadcasts like this could undo all the good work being put into the relationship. "Bangladesh has made no move to stop anti-India programming," said officials tracking this development.

On the other hand, officials said, Iran's own motives are under the scanner. The radio station is publicly owned, which means the government would have to bear responsibility for running anti-India broadcasts in Bangladesh. No one is quite sure where the programming is done, but they say its unlikely this is done in Bangladesh. Therefore, Iran has a greater responsibility to oversee the tone and tenor of its radio programming.

The matter is likely to be discussed between India and Bangladesh in the forthcoming discussions.

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Will Obama's order lead to surge in gun research?


MILWAUKEE (AP) — Nearly as many Americans die from guns as from car crashes each year. We know plenty about the second problem and far less about the first. A scarcity of research on how to prevent gun violence has left policymakers shooting in the dark as they craft gun control measures without much evidence of what works.


That could change with President Barack Obama's order Wednesday to ease research restrictions pushed through long ago by the gun lobby. The White House declared that a 1996 law banning use of money to "advocate or promote gun control" should not keep the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies from doing any work on the topic.


Obama can only do so much, though. Several experts say Congress will have to be on board before anything much changes, especially when it comes to spending money.


How severely have the restrictions affected the CDC?


Its website's A-to-Z list of health topics, which includes such obscure ones as Rift Valley fever, does not include guns or firearms. Searching the site for "guns" brings up dozens of reports on nail gun and BB gun injuries.


The restrictions have done damage "without a doubt" and the CDC has been "overly cautious" about interpreting them, said Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.


"The law is so vague it puts a virtual freeze on gun violence research," said a statement from Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's like censorship: When people don't know what's prohibited, they assume everything is prohibited."


Many have called for a public health approach to gun violence like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.


"The answer wasn't taking away cars," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.


However, while much is known about vehicles and victims in crashes, similar details are lacking about gun violence.


Some unknowns:


—How many people own firearms in various cities and what types.


—What states have the highest proportion of gun ownership.


—Whether gun ownership correlates with homicide rates in a city.


—How many guns used in homicides were bought legally.


—Where juveniles involved in gun fatalities got their weapons.


—What factors contribute to mass shootings like the Newtown, Conn., one that killed 26 people at a school.


"If an airplane crashed today with 20 children and 6 adults there would be a full-scale investigation of the causes and it would be linked to previous research," said Dr. Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.


"There's no such system that's comparable to that" for gun violence, he said.


One reason is changes pushed by the National Rifle Association and its allies in 1996, a few years after a major study showed that people who lived in homes with firearms were more likely to be homicide or suicide victims. A rule tacked onto appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services barred use of funds for "the advocacy or promotion of gun control."


Also, at the gun group's urging, U.S. Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas, led an effort to remove $2.6 million from the CDC's injury prevention center, which had led most of the research on guns. The money was later restored but earmarked for brain injury research.


"What the NRA did was basically terrorize the research community and terrorize the CDC," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who headed the CDC's injury center at the time. "They went after the researchers, they went after institutions, they went after CDC in a very big way, and they went after me," he said. "They didn't want the data to be collected because they were threatened by what the data were showing."


Dickey, who is now retired, said Wednesday that his real concern was the researcher who led that gun ownership study, who Dickey described as being "in his own kingdom or fiefdom" and believing guns are bad.


He and Rosenberg said they have modified their views over time and now both agree that research is needed. They put out a joint statement Wednesday urging research that prevents firearm injuries while also protecting the rights "of legitimate gun owners."


"We ought to research the whole environment, both sides — what the benefits of having guns are and what are the benefits of not having guns," Dickey said. "We should study any part of this problem," including whether armed guards at schools would help, as the National Rifle Association has suggested.


Association officials did not respond to requests for comment. A statement Wednesday said the group "has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership" and that "attacking firearms" is not the answer. It said nothing about research.


The 1996 law "had a chilling effect. It basically brought the field of firearm-related research to a screeching halt," said Benjamin of the Public Health Association.


Webster said researchers like him had to "partition" themselves so whatever small money they received from the CDC was not used for anything that could be construed as gun policy. One example was a grant he received to evaluate a community-based program to reduce street gun violence in Baltimore, modeled after a successful program in Chicago called CeaseFire. He had to make sure the work included nothing that could be interpreted as gun control research, even though other privately funded research might.


Private funds from foundations have come nowhere near to filling the gap from lack of federal funding, Hargarten said. He and more than 100 other doctors and scientists recently sent Vice President Joe Biden a letter urging more research, saying the lack of it was compounding "the tragedy of gun violence."


Since 1973, the government has awarded 89 grants to study rabies, of which there were 65 cases; 212 grants for cholera, with 400 cases, yet only three grants for firearm injuries that topped 3 million, they wrote. The CDC spends just about $100,000 a year out of its multibillion-dollar budget on firearm-related research, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said.


"It's so out of proportion to the burden, however you measure it," said Dr. Matthew Miller, associate professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. As a result, "we don't know really simple things," such as whether tighter gun rules in New York will curb gun trafficking "or is some other pipeline going to open up" in another state, he said.


What now?


CDC officials refused to discuss the topic on the record — a possible sign of how gun shy of the issue the agency has been even after the president's order.


Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement that her agency is "committed to re-engaging gun violence research."


Others are more cautious. The Union of Concerned Scientists said the White House's view that the law does not ban gun research is helpful, but not enough to clarify the situation for scientists, and that congressional action is needed.


Dickey, the former congressman, agreed.


"Congress is supposed to do that. He's not supposed to do that," Dickey said of Obama's order. "The restrictions were placed there by Congress.


"What I was hoping for ... is 'let's do this together,'" Dickey said.


___


Follow Marilynn Marchione's coverage at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Football Star Manti Te'o Faces Tough Questions













Notre Dame's star linebackerManti Te'o faces a problem bigger than any running back he's had to bring down.


As the elaborate hoax about his dead "girlfriend" unravels, many questions remain to be answered, chief among them whether he was complicit in promoting the dramatic story of his girlfriend's death from leukemia. Te'o may soon be forced to tackle those questions himself.


"A lot of people are very suspicious when Te'o says he had no idea and he was just a sucker in this," Deadspin writer Timothy Burke said on "Good Morning America" today. "Why would somebody go to such great lengths to hoax him like that?"


Click here for 'Catfish' stars' advice on online dating.


Burke's Deadspin story broke the scandal, forcing Te'o and Notre Dame to admit the girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, never existed. Notre Dame claims that Te'o is the victim of a "cruel hoax."


"[Notre Dame is] sticking to his story and they're going to, I think, fight and make every sort of attempt they can to prove he had no idea this was going on and that he was the unfortunate victim of a year-long prank," Burke said.


But it won't be easy.






Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images











Tale of Notre Dame Football Star's Girlfriend and Her Death an Alleged Hoax Watch Video









Notre Dame's Athletic Director Discusses Manti Te'o Girlfriend Hoax Watch Video









MTV's 'Catfish' Series Pulls Back Curtain on Online Profiles Watch Video





"I think that there are some questions about when he became aware of it, simply because Notre Dame and Te'o's statement have indicated that he found out about it in late December, but he chose not to correct or identify when he was asked before the BCS Championship game about his girlfriend," he said. The championship game was played on Jan. 7.


Burke said he is particularly eager for answers about the story Te'o told of meeting his girlfriend in 2009 and his father Brian Te'o's statements about how the purported girlfriend used to visit Manti in Hawaii.


The university's athletic director Jack Swarbrick said at a Wednesday night news conference that the school was not speaking for Te'o.


"At the end of the day, this is Manti's story to tell and we believe he should have the right to tell it, which he is going to do," Swarbrick said.


Swarbrick said that Te'o and his family came to the university last month with concerns that Te'o had been the victim of a hoax.


"The university immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax," he said. "While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators."


The school's investigators monitored online chatter by the alleged perpetrators, Swarbrick said, adding that he was shocked by the "casual cruelty" it revealed.


"They enjoyed the joke," Swarbrick said, comparing the ruse to the popular film "Catfish," in which filmmakers revealed a person at the other end of an online relationship was not who she said she was.


"While we still don't know all of the dimensions of this ... there are certain things that I feel confident we do know," Swarbrick said. "The first is that this was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax, perpetrated for reasons we don't understand."


Click here for more scandalous public confessions.


Swarbrick also said that he believed Te'o's representatives were planning to disclose the truth next week until Wednesday's story broke.


Te'o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, has only issued a written statement so far.






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Sahara Islamists take hostages, spreading Mali war


ALGIERS/BAMAKO (Reuters) - Islamist fighters seized dozens of Western and Algerian hostages in a dawn raid on a natural gas facility deep in the Sahara on Wednesday and demanded France halt a new offensive against rebels in neighboring Mali.


Three people, among them one British and one French, were reported killed, but details were sketchy and numbers of those held at Tigantourine ranged from 41 foreigners - including perhaps seven Americans as well as Japanese and Europeans - to over 100 local staff, held separately and less closely watched.


What is clear is that with a dramatic counterpunch to this week's French build-up in Mali, the region's loosely allied, al Qaeda-inspired radicals have set Paris a daunting dilemma and spread fallout from Mali's hitherto obscure civil war far beyond northwest Africa, challenging Washington as well as Europeans and shutting down a major gas field that pumps energy to Europe.


The attack, which Algeria said was led by a veteran, Afghan-trained holy warrior-cum-smuggler dubbed "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence, came just as French ground troops in Mali launched their first assault after six days of air strikes.


The United States, which like European powers endorsed France's decision to intervene last week against Islamists who have seized vast tracts of northern Mali, confirmed Americans were among the hostages and said it would work to "secure" them.


Western and African governments have been alarmed by a flow of weapons and fighters across the unmarked Sahara borders following the end of Libya's civil war in 2011 and fear that Mali, where Islamists drive the national army from the north nine months ago, could become an Afghan-style al Qaeda haven.


The militants, who said they had dozens of fighters in the gas field, issued no explicit threat but made clear to media in neighboring Mauritania the hostages' lives were at risk.


"We hold the Algerian government and the French government and the countries of the hostages fully responsible if our demands are not met and it is up to them to stop the brutal aggression against our people in Mali," read one statement from the group, which called itself the "Battalion of Blood".


In other comments carried by the Mauritanian news agency ANI, the group said its fighters had rigged explosives around the site and any attempt to free the hostages would lead to a "tragic end". The unusually large numbers of gunmen and hostages involved pose serious problems for any rescue operation.


After dark, ANI quoted a militant source saying fighters had repelled a raid by Algerian troops. He added that the hostage-takers' weaponry included mortars and anti-aircraft missiles.


AMERICANS


The militants said seven Americans were among the 41 foreign hostages - a figure U.S. officials said they could not confirm.


Norwegian energy company Statoil, which operates the gas field in a joint venture with Britain's BP and the Algerian state company Sonatrach, said nine of its Norwegian employees and three of its Algerian staff were being held.


Also reported kidnapped by various sources were five Japanese working for the engineering firm JGC Corp, a French national, an Austrian, an Irishman and a number of Britons.


The Algerian government, which fought a bloody civil war against Islamists in the 1990s, said it would not negotiate.


French media said the militants were also demanding that Algeria release dozens of Islamist prisoners from its jails.


Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said: "I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation."


He said he lacked firm information on whether there were links to the situation in Mali. Analysts pointed to shifting alliances and rivalries among Islamists in the region to suggest the hostage-takers may have a range of motives.


In their own statements, they condemned Algeria's secularist government for "betraying" its predecessors in the bloody anti-colonial war against French rule half a century ago by letting French warplanes fly over its territory to Mali. They also accused Algeria of shutting its border to Malian refugees.


Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia told the state news agency APS there were about 20 hostage-takers led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian who fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and set up his own group in the Sahara recently after falling out with other al Qaeda leaders.


Some of those held at the facility, near the small town of In Amenas, close to the Libyan border and about 1,300 km (800 miles) inland, had sporadic contact with the outside world.


The head of a French catering company said he had information from a manager who supervised some 150 Algerian employees at the site. Regis Arnoux of CIS Catering told France's BFM television the local staff were being prevented from leaving but were otherwise free to move around inside and keep on working.


"The Westerners are kept in a separate wing of the base," Arnoux said. "They are tied up and are being filmed. Electricity is cut off, and mobile phones have no charge.


"Direct action seems very difficult ... Algerian officials have told the French authorities as well as BP that they have the situation under control and do not need their assistance."


MALI OFFENSIVE


Just days after a bold deployment of French troops to Mali, another former colony, that had largely silenced critics questioning his leadership after eight months in office, French President Francois Hollande faced a possible further escalation of the conflict, with Western targets at risk across Africa.


He has called for international support against insurgents who France says pose a threat to Africa and the West, and admits it faces a long struggle against well-equipped fighters who seized Timbuktu and other oasis towns in northern Mali and have imposed Islamic law, including public amputation and beheading.


Islamists have warned Hollande that he has "opened the gates of hell" for all French citizens.


French army chief Edouard Guillaud said ground forces were stepping up their operation to engage directly "within hours" the alliance of Islamist fighters, grouping al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and Mali's home grown Ansar Dine and MUJWA.


Residents said a column of some 30 French Sagaie armored vehicles has set off toward rebel positions from the town of Niono, 300 km (190 miles) from the capital Bamako.


A Malian military source said French special forces units were taking part in the operation. Guillaud said France's strikes, involving Rafale and Mirage jet fighters, were being hampered because militants were sheltering among civilians.


Many inhabitants of northern Mali have welcomed the French attacks though some also fear being caught in the cross-fire.


Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian acknowledged that France faced a hard slog, particularly in western Mali where AQIM's mostly foreign fighters have camps: "It's tough. We were aware from the beginning it would be a very difficult operation."


Hollande said on Tuesday that French forces would remain in Mali until stability returned to the West African nation. Hollande said France hoped, however, to hand over to African forces in its former colony, "in the coming days or weeks".


West African military chiefs met for a second day in Bamako to hammer out details of a U.N.-mandated deployment that had been expected to start only in September but was suddenly kick-started by French intervention. They said their aim was to send in the first units of a 2,000-man emergency force on Thursday.


Hollande's intervention in Mali brings risks for eight French hostages held by AQIM in the Sahara as well as the 30,000 French citizens living across West Africa. A French helicopter pilot was killed on Friday, France's only combat death so far.


The conflict in Mali, a landlocked state of 15 million twice the size of France, has displaced an estimated 30,000 people and raised concerns across mostly Muslim West Africa of a radicalization of Islam in the region.


"There is a great hope," one man said from Timbuktu, where he said Islamist fighters were trying to blend into civilian neighborhoods. "We hope that the city will be freed soon."


(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher and Andrew Callus in London, Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Laurent Prieur in Nouakchott, Daniel Flynn in Dakar, John Irish, Catherine Bremer and Nick Vinocur in Paris, David Alexander in Rome and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Kevin Liffey)



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Football: Rooney hammers United into FA Cup fourth round






LONDON: Wayne Rooney marked his first Manchester United appearance since December 23 with the only goal of the game as they beat West Ham 1-0 in a FA Cup third round replay at Old Trafford on Wednesday.

Victory saw Premier League leaders United, the record 11-time FA Cup winners, into a fourth round tie at home to fellow top flight side Fulham.

Rooney opened the scoring in the ninth minute after the recalled Anderson produced a superb, defence-splitting pass and Javier Hernandez bore down on goal before unselfishly squaring the ball to the England striker, who was never going to miss from a few yards out.

The forward could have put the result in this all-Premier League clash beyond doubt in the second half but Rooney blasted over the top from the penalty spot after Jordan Spence handled a cross from Ryan Giggs.

"In the FA Cup anything can happen so we are pleased to get through," United veteran Ryan Giggs told ITV. "Some players are coming back from injury which can be tough but they did well.

"West Ham are a tough team to play against. We couldn't get out of our half at the start of the second half but we kept it better when Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes came on."

Frustrated Hammers manager Sam Allardyce insisted his side had been denied a penalty for handball.

"We should have had a penalty," he said, before voicing the long-held belief that United are favoured by referees at Old Trafford.

"The difference is that Jordan Spence plays for West Ham and Rafael plays for Manchester United at Old Trafford," Allardyce said. "The incidents are the same. If you give one you've got to give both, simple as that."

Earlier, Arsenal left it late before seeing off Swansea 1-0 in a third round replay with England midfielder Jack Wilshere scoring four minutes before full-time with a powerful shot.

"It was a great set-up from Olivier Giroud," said Wilshere

His goal earned Arsenal -- bidding for a first major trophy in eight years -- a fourth round clash with second-tier Brighton, the 1983 FA Cup finalists.

"I didn't want extra-time. It was important we got the winner before 90 minutes. We know Brighton play football, they play great football."

- AFP/jc



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DGCA forms team to review Dreamliner safety

NEW DELHI: With Japanese airlines grounding all their Boeing 787 aircraft for thorough checks, India has decided to do a safety review of the aircraft as Air India has also been facing technical glitches in its Dreamliners.

The DGCA ( Directorate General of Civil Aviation) on Wednesday formed a technical panel to examine the issues affecting AI's six B-787s, but as of now there is no move to ground them.

While AI maintains that it has so far not faced any issue that affects safety on the Dreamliner, the airline's engineers and pilots are checking the aircraft before each flight. It will do as advised by Boeing or US Federal Aviation Administration as DGCA will also base its recommendations on the basis of what these two say. DGCA chief Arun Mishra said, "We are taking all details from Boeing and AI. As of now there is no move to ground the Dreamliners here but we are constantly monitoring the situation," Mishra said.

All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines have grounded their 24 B-787s for thorough checks following major problems like fuel leaks and a battery problem triggering a cockpit error message that forced some pilots to land in southwestern Japan.

AI chief Rohit Nandan said, "None of those issues have so far been such that they affect passenger safety. We had some time back called a special team from Boeing for addressing the issues we face with our B-787s. Our engineers and flight safety department is reviewing these aircraft before each flight. As of now there is no plan to ground the B-787 but we are watching the situation very closely and are in constant touch with Boeing. We will not hesitate in taking any step in the interest of passenger safety." AI currently has six B-787s and uses it on both domestic and international routes.

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Large study confirms flu vaccine safe in pregnancy


NEW YORK (AP) — A large study offers reassuring news for pregnant women: It's safe to get a flu shot.


The research found no evidence that the vaccine increases the risk of losing a fetus, and may prevent some deaths. Getting the flu while pregnant makes fetal death more likely, the Norwegian research showed.


The flu vaccine has long been considered safe for pregnant women and their fetus. U.S. health officials began recommending flu shots for them more than five decades ago, following a higher death rate in pregnant women during a flu pandemic in the late 1950s.


But the study is perhaps the largest look at the safety and value of flu vaccination during pregnancy, experts say.


"This is the kind of information we need to provide our patients when discussing that flu vaccine is important for everyone, particularly for pregnant women," said Dr. Geeta Swamy, a researcher who studies vaccines and pregnant women at Duke University Medical Center.


The study was released by the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday as the United States and Europe suffer through an early and intense flu season. A U.S. obstetricians group this week reminded members that it's not too late for their pregnant patients to get vaccinated.


The new study was led by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. It tracked pregnancies in Norway in 2009 and 2010 during an international epidemic of a new swine flu strain.


Before 2009, pregnant women in Norway were not routinely advised to get flu shots. But during the pandemic, vaccinations against the new strain were recommended for those in their second or third trimester.


The study focused on more than 113,000 pregnancies. Of those, 492 ended in the death of the fetus. The researchers calculated that the risk of fetal death was nearly twice as high for women who weren't vaccinated as it was in vaccinated mothers.


U.S. flu vaccination rates for pregnant women grew in the wake of the 2009 swine flu pandemic, from less than 15 percent to about 50 percent. But health officials say those rates need to be higher to protect newborns as well. Infants can't be vaccinated until 6 months, but studies have shown they pick up some protection if their mothers got the annual shot, experts say.


Because some drugs and vaccines can be harmful to a fetus, there is a long-standing concern about giving any medicine to a pregnant woman, experts acknowledged. But this study should ease any worries about the flu shot, said Dr. Denise Jamieson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


"The vaccine is safe," she said.


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Online:


Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org


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Obama Unveils Sweeping Plan to Curb Gun Violence













Flanked by four children from across the country, President Obama today unveiled a sweeping plan to curb gun violence in America through an extensive package of legislation and executive actions not seen since the 1960s.


Obama is asking Congress to implement mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, including private sales; reinstate a ban on some assault-style weapons; ban high-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds; and crackdown on illicit weapons trafficking.


The president's proposal also includes new initiatives for school safety, including a call for more federal aid to states for hiring so-called school resource officers (police), counselors and psychologists, and improved access to mental health care.


Obama also signed 23 executive actions on gun violence, policy directives not needing congressional approval. Among them is a directive to federal agencies to beef up the national criminal background-check system and a memorandum lifting a freeze on gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


"I intend to use whatever weight this office holds to make them a reality," Obama said at a midday news conference. "If there's even one thing that we can do to reduce this violence, if there's even one life that can be saved, then we have an obligation to try.






Maqndel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images













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"And I'm going to do my part."


The announcement comes one month after a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., left 26 dead, including 20 children. Obama called it the worst moment of his presidency and promised "meaningful action" in response.


The proposals were the work of an Obama-appointed task force, led by Vice President Joe Biden, that held 22 meetings on gun violence in the past three weeks. The group received input from more than 220 organizations and dozens of elected officials, a senior administration official said.


As part of the push, Obama nominated a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which leads enforcement of federal gun laws and has been without a confirmed director for six years. The president appointed acting director Todd Jones, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, to the post, if the Senate confirms him.


The administration's plan also calls for aid to states for the hiring of more school resource officers, counselors and psychologists. Obama also directed the Department of Education to ensure all schools have improved emergency-response plans.


He also called on Congress to make it illegal to possess or transfer armor-piercing bullets; it's now only illegal to produce them.


Officials said some of the legislative measures Obama outlined could be introduced on Capitol Hill next week.


"House committees of jurisdiction will review these recommendations," a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said in response to Obama's announcement. "And if the Senate passes a bill, we will also take a look at that."


The proposals are already being met with stiff opposition from gun rights advocates, led by the National Rifle Association, which overnight released a scathing ad attacking the president as an "elitist hypocrite."


"Are the president's kids more important than yours?" the narrator of the NRA ad says. "Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?"






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