Chinese film fans decry censors' cuts in 'Skyfall'






BEIJING: Chinese cinema fans were up in arms Tuesday over cuts made to "Skyfall", complaining that the censors had ruined the latest film in the James Bond franchise, which hit screens this week.

Some scenes from the movie, parts of which were filmed in Shanghai starring Daniel Craig in his third appearance as the British secret agent, were clearly too sensitive for the censors, especially scenes referring to China.

"It's annoying! Every time it's the same!" wrote one user named Niccilee in a post on one popular microblog. "We've been waiting for this for so long and then they cut it and re-cut it!"

The 23rd official film in the highly lucrative series came out late last year in most markets but Chinese authorities put off the release date until this week under its usual practice of favouring domestic productions.

When it did hit the screen on Monday, it was with several cuts.

Among the scenes to have ended up on the cutting room floor was one where a hitman played by Ola Rapace takes out a Chinese security guard in a Shanghai sky-scraper.

"Are they afraid of copy-cat killings by other criminals?" asked Leslie Zhuang, one disappointed viewer in an online posting. "If scenes like this are cut, you may as well not import the film!"

A scene depicting prostitution in Macau -- a special administrative region of China -- had also been taken out, as was a line from Bond's nemesis, played by Javier Bardem, in which he mentions having suffered torture at the hands of Chinese security agents.

"I'd rather watch the pirated DVD," said Li Xiaotian, another Internet user, referring to the illegal copies of films that are easy to come by in China.

The official Xinhua news agency said the cuts had prompted calls for reform in the way films are censored, although there was no criticism of the "Skyfall" cuts in the state media.

Rules governing censorship in China are opaque and reasons are never given for why cuts are made. Few films escape the censors unscathed, unless they offer a particularly flattering depiction of the Chinese people.

Regardless of the censors, the cuts did not seem to have dented box office sales at one Beijing cinema, Megabox, which reported that most tickets had been sold for screenings on Tuesday.

China imposes strict rules over what films are allowed to be seen by the public, banning what it considers any negative portrayal of contemporary politics or issues it says might lead to social unrest.

After years of pressure, China last year agreed to increase the number of imported films allowed in annually from 20 to 34, in a year when 893 films were produced domestically.

- AFP/ir



Read More..

High drama in BJP on eve of presidential election

NEW DELHI: High drama unfolded in the BJP today on the eve of election of a new party president with Yashwant Sinha procuring a nomination form and Mahesh Jethmalani complaining he is being denied one even as Nitin Gadkari appeared set to get a second term.

Gadkari, who shared the stage at a party programme in Utan in Maharashtra with senior leader L K Advani, will reach the capital tonight. He will file his nomination papers tomorrow and is likely to be declared elected unopposed, party sources said.

Gadkari and Advani were not seen exchanging any word at the programme and the apparent cold vibes reflected the rift within the party on the incumbent getting a second term. However, with the RSS still firmly backing Gadkari, he is likely to get another three years at the helm.

Sinha created a flutter this evening when he procured a nomination form and voters' list from chief electoral officer, Thawar Chand Gehlot. Advani declined to answer newsmen's questions as to whether Sinha, a former Union minister, is in the race.

Confirming this, Gehlot said Sinha is the only person to have taken the form from him till now. However, he hastened to add that the forms are easily available on the party website and state headquarters of the BJP.

Earlier in the day, Mahesh Jethmalani said he is being denied a nomination form to prevent him from contesting.

Party veterans point out that despite all the pretence of an election of the BJP president, the stringent provisions of the party Constitution will make it difficult for the forms of Sinha and Jethmalani to be accepted.

A candidate for the BJP presidential poll should have been an active member of the party for 12 consecutive years and an ordinary member for 15 years. He would also need atleast 20 proposers each from five different state units, which adds upto 100.

While Mahesh Jethmalani fails to qualify, Sinha is unlikely to get 100 proposers from five states.

Read More..

Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws


NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.


A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.


"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.


An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.


Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.


Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.


The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.


Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.


But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.


Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."


"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.


Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.


To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.


"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.


Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.


Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.


In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.


The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.


Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.


While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.


"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."


___


Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.


___


Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz


Read More..

Obama's Inauguration: A Night to Remember

President Barack Obama dances with first lady Michelle Obama at the Commander-in-Chief Ball, Jan. 21, 2013, in Washington, DC. Pres. Obama was sworn-in for his second term as president during a public ceremonial inauguration earlier in the day. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Read More..

Algeria finds dead Canadian militants as siege toll rises


ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian forces have found the bodies of two Canadian Islamist fighters after a bloody siege at a desert gas plant, a security source said on Monday, as the death toll reached at least 80 after troops stormed the complex to end the hostage crisis.


Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal is expected to give details on Monday about the siege near the town of In Amenas, which left American, British, French, Japanese, Norwegian, Filipino and Romanian workers dead or missing.


Much remains unclear about events after the jihadists staged the attack last Wednesday. However, an Algerian newspaper said they had arrived in cars painted in the colors of state energy company Sonatrach but registered in neighboring Libya, a country awash with arms since Muammar Gaddafi's fall in 2011.


The Algerian security source told Reuters that documents found on the bodies of the two militants had identified them as Canadians, as special forces scoured the plant following Saturday's bloody end to the crisis.


Veteran Islamist fighter Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of al Qaeda, and an official Algerian source has said the militants included people from outside the African continent, as well as Arabs and Africans.


A security source said on Sunday that Algerian troops had found the bodies of 25 hostages, raising the number of hostages killed to 48 and the total number of deaths to at least 80. He said six militants were captured alive and troops were still searching for others.


A Japanese government source said the Algerian government had informed Tokyo that nine Japanese had been killed, the biggest toll so far among foreigners at the plant. Six Filipinos died and four were wounded, a government spokesman in Manila said.


The raid has exposed the vulnerability of multinational-run oil and gas installations in an important producing region and pushed the growing threat from Islamist militant groups in the Sahara to a prominent position in the West's security agenda.


Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has ordered an investigation into how security forces failed to prevent the attack, the daily El Khabar said. The militants had used nine cars in Sonatrach colors and all with Libyan registration plates, it quoted unnamed security sources as saying.


Algerian Tahar Ben Cheneb - leader of a group called the Movement of Islamic Youth in the South who was killed on the first day of the assault - had been based in Libya where he married a local woman two months ago, it said.


ONE-EYED JIHADIST


Belmokhtar - a one-eyed jihadist who fought in Afghanistan and Algeria's civil war of the 1990s when the secular government fought Islamists - tied the desert attack to France's intervention across the Sahara against Islamist rebels in Mali.


"We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation," he said in a video, according to Sahara Media, a regional website. About 40 attackers participated in the raid, he said, roughly matching the government's figures for fighters killed and captured.


Belmokhtar demanded an end to French air strikes against Islamist fighters in neighboring Mali. These began five days before the fighters swooped before dawn and seized a plant that produces 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas exports.


U.S. and European officials doubt such a complex raid could have been organized quickly enough to have been conceived as a direct response to the French military intervention. However, the French action could have triggered an operation that had already been planned.


The group behind the raid, the Mulathameen Brigade, also threatened to carry out more such attacks if Western powers did not end what it called an assault on Muslims in Mali, according to the SITE service, which monitors militant statements.


In a statement published by the Mauritania-based Nouakchott News Agency, the hostage takers said they had offered talks about freeing the captives, but the Algerian authorities had been determined to use military force.


"We opened the door for negotiations with the Westerners and the Algerians, and granted them safety from the beginning of the operation, but one of the senior (Algerian) intelligence officials confirmed to us in a phone call that they will destroy the place with everyone in it," SITE quoted the statement as saying.


BLOODY SIEGE


The siege turned bloody on Thursday when the Algerian army opened fire, saying fighters were trying to escape with their prisoners. Survivors said Algerian forces blasted several trucks in a convoy carrying both hostages and their captors.


Nearly 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners escaped, mainly on Thursday when the fighters were driven from the residential barracks. Some captors remained holed up in the industrial complex until Saturday when they were overrun.


The bloodshed has strained Algeria's relations with its Western allies, some of which have complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken.


Nevertheless, Britain and France both defended the military action by Algeria, the strongest military power in the Sahara and an ally the West needs in combating the militants.


Among other foreigners confirmed dead by their home countries were three Britons, one American and two Romanians. The missing include five Norwegians, three Britons and a British resident. An Algerian security source said at least one Frenchman was also among the dead.


The raid on the plant, which was home to expatriate workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm BGC Corp and others, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara.


However, Algeria is determined to press on with its energy industry. Oil Minister Youcef Yousfi visited the site and said physical damage was minor, state news service APSE reported. The plant would start up again in two days, he said.


Algeria, scarred by the civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, insisted from the start of the crisis there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism. France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to crush Islamist rebels in northern Mali.


(Additional reporting by Anton Slodkowski in Tokyo, Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, William Maclean in Dubai, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris and Daniel Flynn in Dakar; Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Giles Elgood)



Read More..

Another Delhi gang-rape suspect is under 18, says lawyer






NEW DELHI: A lawyer for one of five suspects who have gone on trial for the fatal gang-rape of a student on a New Delhi bus said on Monday his client was under 18 and should appear before a juvenile court.

Police had said Vinay Sharma, a gym assistant and fitness trainer, was aged 20 and he was put on trial along with four other adult suspects in a special "fast-track" court on Monday.

"My client is a minor and I have requested the court that his case should be moved to the juvenile justice court," Sharma's lawyer A P Singh told AFP outside the courtroom, adding that a ruling was expected on January 24.

A sixth suspect in the horrifying crime, which has provoked street protests and a month of soul-searching in India, is being tried in a juvenile court where he is expected to receive a far more lenient sentence.

The woman, a promising student whose father worked extra shifts as an airport baggage handler to educate her, suffered massive intestinal injuries during the assault on the bus in which she was raped and violated with an iron bar.

She died 13 days later after the government airlifted her to a Singapore hospital in a last-ditch bid to save her life.

- AFP/xq



Read More..

Remo D'Souza planning to perform at Mahakumbh

MUMBAI: A dance performance at the ongoing Mahakumbh? If choreographer-turned-director RemoD'Souza has his way, he will perform with his dance troupe in Aallahabad in Uttar Pradesh soon.

"We are really trying to perform at the Mahakumbh festival this year. But managing the logistics is not easy. We really want to perform there," he told IANS.

"We are trying to get everything locked by this week and will be going there as soon as possible," Remo said.

Mahakumbh comes every 12 years and this year it is being held in Allahabad. The 55-day congregation by the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna and the invisible, mythical Saraswti began Jan 14.

Currently Remo is promoting his directorial venture " ABCD: Anybody Can Dance", a 3D dance movie made with choreographers Prabhudeva and Ganesh Acharya in key roles.

Remo also went on to add that if things work out, he will perform to a Ganapati number.

"I have this good Ganapati number which I want to perform there. It is not like promotion, but I think it will the best place to perform the song," he said.

Read More..

Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws


NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.


A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.


"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.


An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.


Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.


Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.


The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.


Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.


But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.


Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."


"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.


Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.


To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.


"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.


Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.


Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.


In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.


The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.


Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.


While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.


"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."


___


Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.


___


Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz


Read More..

Obama Second Inaugural: A Déjà Vu Moment













At the height of the "fiscal cliff" showdown, the final political battle of his first term, President Barack Obama lamented the bitter persistence of Washington partisanship as "déjà vu all over again."


Today, as Obama delivers his second inaugural address on the west front of the Capitol, he could say the same thing about the looming political battles of his new term.


Four years ago, Obama took office amidst what he then described as "gathering clouds and raging storms," an economic crisis that resulted from "our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age."


The nation was in the throes of a financial collapse, decades in the making, whose breadth and depth were only starting to be known. It would become a devastating recession, the worst since the Great Depression.


Now, even as the economy continues a gradual climb back from the brink, many of those "hard choices" still remain, with climbing deficits and debt and a yawning partisan gap over how to deal with them.


On the horizon is a cascade of fresh fiscal crises, these politically self-imposed, over the nation's debt ceiling, spending cuts and a federal budget, all of which economists say threaten another recession and could further downgrade of the nation's credit rating.








Obama Sworn In for Second Term, Kicks off Inaugural Festivities Watch Video









Getting the Parties Started: Memorable Inaugural Balls Watch Video







Obama will use the first major speech of his second term to try to reset the tone of debate and turn the page on the political battles of the past, hoping for something of a fresh start.


He will "talk about the challenges that face us and what unites us as Americans," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told ABC News.


"Monday is an American moment: the swearing-in of the President of the United States -- everyone's president," Messina said. "You're going to see a president who wants to work across party lines to get things done, that's what the country wants."


He will acknowledge that we won't "settle every debate or resolve every difference" but that we "have an obligation to work together," said a senior administration official, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely about the speech.


Obama will not discuss specific policy prescriptions in his address, though he may broadly allude to issues of war, immigration, climate change and environment, and gun control, officials said. The details will be saved for the State of the Union address on Feb. 12.


But the president will make clear that his re-election -- the first Democrat to win two elections with more than 50 percent of the vote since FDR -- reflects momentum for his agenda, said top White House aides.


"He's going to find every way he can to compromise. But he's going to be pretty clear, and we're also going to bring the American people more into the debate than we did in the first term," senior Obama adviser David Plouffe said on ABC's "This Week."


Polls show Obama begins his second term with soaring popularity -- the highest job approval rating in years -- and strong backing on some of his top legislative priorities.


Fifty-five percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of Obama's job performance overall, the most since November 2009, with a small exception for the 56 percent spike shortly after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.


That rating compares with 19 percent approval for Congress -- matching its lowest at or near the start of a new session in polls by ABC News and the Washington Post since 1975.


Majorities in the survey also broadly favor Obama's position on the debt ceiling, gun control measures, and reforms for the immigration system.






Read More..

Algeria expects heavy hostage toll as West defends ally


ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - Algeria said on Sunday it expected heavy hostage casualties after its troops ended a desert siege, but Western governments warned against criticizing tactics used by their vital ally in the struggle with Islamists across the Sahara.


An Algerian minister acknowledged the death toll would rise, and a private television station reported that 25 bodies had been found at the gas plant near the town of In Amenas after forces staged a final assault against the Islamist hostage-takers on Saturday.


Some Western governments had expressed frustration at not being informed of the Algerian authorities' plans to storm the complex. But France, which is fighting Islamist rebels across the desert in Mali, joined Britain in playing down any suggestion the response from Algeria - the main military power in the Sahara region - had been over-hasty or heavy-handed.


"What everyone needs to know is that these terrorists who attacked this gas plant are killers who pillage, rape, plunder and kill. The situation was unbearable," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.


"It's easy to say that this or that should have been done. The Algerian authorities took a decision and the toll is very high but I am a bit bothered ... when the impression is given that the Algerians are open to question. They had to deal with terrorists," he told Europe 1 radio in an interview.


The Islamists' pre-dawn attack on Wednesday has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara and pushed Islamist radicalism in northern Africa to centre stage.


Algeria, scarred by a civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, had insisted there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism.


Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out on Sunday its record in fighting Islamists. "Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack," he said in a television statement.


"We should recognize all that the Algerians have done to work with us and to help and coordinate with us. I'd like to thank them for that. We should also recognize that the Algerians too have seen lives lost among their soldiers."


France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to have a chance of crushing Islamist rebels in northern Mali. Algiers has promised to shut its porous 1,000-km border with Mali to prevent al Qaeda-linked insurgents simply melting away into its empty desert expanses and rugged mountains.


Algeria's permission for France to use its airspace, confirmed by Fabius last week, also makes it much easier to establish direct supply lines for its troops which are trying to stop the Islamist rebels from taking the whole of Mali.


HIGHER DEATH TOLL


Algeria's Interior Ministry had reported on Saturday that 23 hostages and 32 militants were killed during the assaults launched by Algerian special forces to end the crisis, with 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages freed.


However, Minister of Communication Mohamed Said said this would rise when final numbers were issued in the next few hours. "I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up," Said was quoted as saying by the official APS news agency.


Details are only slowly emerging on what happened during the siege, which marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa.


Private Algerian television station Ennahar said on Sunday that 25 bodies had been discovered at the Tiguentourine plant, adding that the operation to clear the base would last 48 hours.


The bodies were believed to belong to hostages executed by the militants, said Ennahar TV, which is known to have good sources within Algerian security.


In London, Cameron said three British nationals had been confirmed killed, while a further three Britons plus a British resident were also believed to be dead.


One Briton had already was confirmed killed when the gunmen seized the hostages at the plant near the Libyan border, run by Norway's Statoil along with Britain's BP and Algeria's state oil company.


MULTINATIONAL HOSTAGE-TAKERS


Said reported that the militants had six different nationalities and the operation to clear the plant of mines laid by the hostage-takers was still under way.


Believed to be among the 32 dead militants was their leader, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a Nigerien close to al Qaeda-linked commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, presumed mastermind of the raid.


One American has also been confirmed dead. Statoil said five of its workers, all Norwegian nationals, were still missing. Japanese and American workers are also unaccounted for.


On Saturday President Barack Obama said the United States was seeking a "fuller understanding" from Algerian authorities of what had happened, but added that "the blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out".


BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said on Saturday four of its 18 workers at the site were missing. The remaining 14 were safe.


The militant attack was one of the most audacious in recent years and almost certainly planned before French troops launched the operation in Mali this month to stem an advance by Islamist fighters.


Hundreds of hostages escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed.


Before the Interior Ministry released its provisional death toll, an Algerian security source said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national.


The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details.


Mauritanian news agencies identified the field commander of the group that attacked the plant as Nigeri, a fighter from one of the Arab tribes in Niger who had joined the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in early-2005.


That group eventually joined up with al Qaeda to become Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It and allied groups are the targets of the French military operation in Mali.


The news agencies described him as "one of the closest people" to Belmokhtar, who fought in Afghanistan and then in Algeria's civil war of the 1990s. Nigeri was known as a man for "difficult missions", having carried out attacks in Mauritania, Mali and Niger.


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 over the country's outwardly tough security measures.


Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.


Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.


The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in the civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.


(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris, Daniel Flynn in Dakar; Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Alison Williams)



Read More..