Algerian army raid kills 34 hostages

AN Algerian air strike has killed 34 hostages, some of them Westerners, and 15 of their Islamist kidnappers at a desert gas field, a spokesman for the kidnappers has been quoted as saying.

"Thirty-four hostages and 15 kidnappers were killed in an (air) raid by the Algerian army," the spokesman told the ANI news agency in remarks that have not been independently confirmed.

The source said Westerners were among the dead, but did not elaborate.

Also killed was Abu al-Baraa, who led the operation in which 41 foreigners and scores of Algerians were seized.

The spokesman said Algerian aircraft attacked the kidnappers when they tried to "transport some of the hostages in vehicles to a location to the south".

The militants said they seized the hostages, who are known to include US, French, British, Irish, Norwegian and Japanese citizens, in retaliation for the French military intervention in northern Mali.

Algerian media reported that 15 foreigners and 30 Algerians being held hostage had managed to escape, but authorities could not confirm this.

Algerian troops encircled the plant on Thursday, prompting gunmen to demand their withdrawal to allow for negotiations.

They have also demanded the release of some 100 Islamist extremists in Algeria, and want them sent to northern Mali, where French and Malian troops were battling extremists who seized a massive swathe of territory in April 2012.

08.16 | 0 komentar | Read More

US stocks open higher as banks fall

US stocks have opened higher but bank shares are lower following Bank of America's quarterly earnings report, which came in close to expectations.

Five minutes into trade on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 41.31 points, or 0.30 per cent, at 13,552.54.

The broad-based S&P 500 gained 5.51 points, or 0.37 per cent, to 1,478.14.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 14.43 points, or 0.46 per cent, to 3,131.97.

Bank of America shares were down 1.9 per cent after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings that were sharply lower than the year-ago period, heavily dented by write-offs related to settlements related to its mortgage business.

Citigroup fell 3.0 per cent on its earnings disappointment, also hit by mortgage business charges.

Boeing shares lost another 1.3 per cent after its 787 was grounded around the world for safety inspections.

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US jobless claims drop to five-year low

NEW US jobless claims dropped last week to the lowest level in five years as the ailing jobs market slowly improves, official data shows.

Initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits totalled 335,000 in the week ending January 12, down a hefty 37,000, or almost 10 per cent, from the prior week's revised level, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.

The often volatile weekly claims report was lower than the 370,000 analysts expected.

Last week's four-week moving claims average fell to 359,250 from the prior week's 366,000.

Claims, a sign of the pace of layoffs, trended in the 370,000 range for most of 2012.

Marisa Di Natale of Moody's Analytics noted claims were at their lowest level since early January 2008 and fell for the first time in six weeks.

"Over the past few weeks the claims data have been difficult to interpret because of holiday-related volatility," she said.

"Nevertheless, claims are down 27,000 between the December and January payroll survey reference periods which indicates a modest improvement in job growth over the month."

The unemployment rate held steady at 7.8 per cent in December, a four-year low, and job growth last year jumped by 1.4 per cent, the biggest increase in six years.

The January jobs report is scheduled on February 1.

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US housing starts rebound in December

CONSTRUCTION of new US homes rebounded in December, the Commerce Department says, capping a year of strong recovery in the industry.

Housing starts grew to an annual pace of 954,000 units last month, rebounding from November's 851,000, which was depressed by the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the densely populated northeastern coastal region.

The annual pace has picked up from 754,000 units at mid-year 2012 and 697,000 units in December 2011.

The actual number of homes started in 2012 was estimated by the department at 780,000, a sharp 28.1 per cent higher than 2011, showing a sustained recovery in the housing sector after the 2008-2009 recession.

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Vic residents told to leave bushfire zone

RESIDENTS in the east Victorian town of Licola are being told to consider leaving their homes as a fast moving bushfire fanned by changing wind directions threatens the community.

The fire in the eastern part of the Baw Baw National Park had grown from 250 hectares on Thursday afternoon to 4200 hectares that night.

Watch-and-act alerts are advising residents in several surrounding towns to activate their bushfire plans ahead of a wind change expected in the early hours of Friday.

A CFA spokeswoman said strong winds had helped fan the fire, making it fast moving and unpredictable.

Smoke could be seen 50km away, she said.

Residents of Licola have received emergency SMS alerts and are being told to consider leaving the area as soon as possible as the CFA anticipates the blaze will hit Licola Road on Friday.

The CFA warning says the out-of-control fire is expected to impact the towns of Coongulla, Coopers Creek, Cowwarr, Glengarry, Glenmaggie, Heyfield, Licola, Parkers Corner, Seaton, Toongabbie, Glengarry North, Erica and Rawson between 6am (AEDT) and 10am on Friday.

Residents of Maiden Town, Walhalla and Mormon Town are being warned they could be affected by embers from the blaze.

An emergency relief centre has been established at the Sale Baptist Church.

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster James Taylor said hot weather overnight combined with gale force winds forecast to hit the region on Friday morning were concerning.

A total fire ban has been declared for the West and South Gippsland, north east, northern country and East Gippsland districts for Friday.

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Canberra community remembers 2003 fires

A DECADE on from the fatal Canberra firestorm, the community will gather for a low key commemoration service.

On January 18, 2003 a bushfire killed four people and destroyed more than 500 homes on the city's western edge.

In the shadow of the bushfires now burning at Cooma and Yass, the people of Canberra will come together on Friday to remember that disaster.

The commemoration will have the theme of Reflection, Inspiration, and Looking Forward.

It will involve speakers from the community, churches and emergency services as well as ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher.

ACT Emergency Services Minister Simon Corbell, who lives in the area affected by the fire, says he thinks people's recovery from 2003 has been mixed.

"Many people have very much responded to the confronting nature of the circumstances they faced ... in 2003," he told AAP.

"But for others the impact and the harm caused is still very real and very raw in their emotions."

But he thought the community overall had shown "extraordinary resilience and capacity to grow".

Mr Corbell said the ACT was much better prepared now to deal with "the ever-present threat" of bushfires.

The commemoration service will take place at 10am AEDT at the ACT Bushfire Memorial on the corner of Uriarra and Cotter Roads in Weston.

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NRA head defends using Obama girls in ad

THE head of the powerful National Rifle Association has defended his group's mention of President Barack Obama's daughters in a web ad criticising the administration's moves on gun control.

"Our point is not about the president's kids. It's about everybody else's kids," said NRA president David Keene, speaking to CBS television.

"We think that one of the most important things we can do is provide security to the children of America and we don't think that's an inappropriate message."

The ad, released by the NRA on Tuesday, has been roundly criticised for breaking a cardinal rule in Washington - that the children of a sitting US president are off-limits for criticism or as a political talking point.

The NRA released the ad one day before Obama signed 23 executive actions in a bid to check a rash of gun violence including the killings of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month and other recent mass shootings.

The NRA spot asked why Obama is "sceptical about putting armed security in schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?"

Like the children of earlier presidents, the Obama girls - Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11 - receive the protection of armed Secret Service officers wherever they go, including their private Washington, DC school.

The NRA ad slammed the duplicity of "protection for their kids, and gun-free zones for ours".

"Are the president's kids more important than yours?" the NRA's narrator asked in a deep voice.

In a December interview, Obama said he was "sceptical" that an NRA proposal of placing armed security guards at schools around the country was the sole answer to curbing mass shootings.

White House spokesman Jay Carney released a statement on Wednesday responding to the ad shortly before Obama outlined his new gun proposals.

"Most Americans agree that a president's children should not be used as pawns in a political fight," Carney said in a statement emailed to reporters.

"But to go so far as to make the safety of the president's children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly."

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668 rhinos poached in S Africa in 2012

POACHERS slaughtered a record 668 rhinos in South Africa last year, up 50 per cent, as demand for their horns continued to surge on the black market in Asia, the government says.

More than three in five of the slaughtered pachyderms were from the vast Kruger National Park, South Africa's largest wildlife reserve and the country's top safari destination.

Five more animals have been killed since the start of the year, according to the environmental affairs ministry.

Poaching-related arrests climbed from 165 in 2010 to 267 in 2012.

South Africa is home to about three-quarters of Africa's 20,000 or so white rhinos and 4800 critically endangered black rhinos.

Authorities have launched inter-linking campaigns to slow the killings.

Soldiers and surveillance aircraft were deployed in the Kruger Park, while stricter criteria for rhino hunting permits sent applications tumbling 60 per cent to 90 in 2012, from 222 a year before.

Rhinos are victims of a booming demand for their horns, which some people in Asia think have medicinal properties. The medical claim is widely discredited.

South Africa and Vietnam last year signed a deal to tackle the trade.

The number of rhinos poached in the country has risen sharply from 13 in 2007 to 448 in 2011.

08.17 | 0 komentar | Read More

22 dead in Pakistan gas cylinder blast

A GAS cylinder has exploded at a religious gathering in Pakistan's northwestern Swat valley, killing 22 people and wounding more than 80, officials say.

The explosion took place at a weekly meeting of the local Tableeghi Jamaat (preachers' party) at its centre on the outskirts of Mingora, the main town in the district, regional police chief Akhtar Hayat said.

"According to initial reports it was a gas cylinder blast," another senior police officer, Gul Afzal Afridi, told AFP.

"The death toll has gone up to 22," local administration chief Kamran Khan told reporters at the Tableeghi centre. He said 87 people were wounded, 20 of them are in serious condition.

There were about 1500 people listening to the speech of a Muslim cleric at the centre when the cylinder exploded on Thursday, he said.

A bomb disposal unit was summoned to investigate, though there was no sign of any explosives at the blast site, he said.

Mingora is the town where internationally renowned Pakistani schoolgirl campaigner Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head in October last year in an attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban. She is recovering and undergoing further treatment in Britain.

The Pakistani Taliban seized much of Swat during a 2007-2009 insurgency, but the army declared the region back under control after an offensive in July 2009.

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Syria accuses peace envoy of bias

SYRIA'S government has accused UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi of "flagrant bias" against it after the veteran diplomat dismissed a mooted plan by President Bashar al-Assad as "one-sided".

"Syria is shocked by the statements of Lakhdar Brahimi, who has overstepped his mandate and exhibited a flagrant bias for those parties known to be conspiring against Syria and its people," the Syrian foreign ministry said in a statement broadcast by state television on Thursday.

Brahimi said on Wednesday that Assad's new road map for his embattled country is "more sectarian, more one-sided" than previous initiatives to end the nearly 22-month conflict in Syria that the UN estimates has left more than 60,000 people dead.

"What has been said this time is not really different and it is perhaps even more sectarian, more one-sided," the veteran diplomat said.

"What you need is reaching out and recognising that there is a ... very serious problem between Syrians, and that Syrians have got to talk to one another to solve it," he said.

Assad's three-step plan for a "political solution" in Syria, outlined in a speech to his supporters on Sunday, was swiftly rejected by the opposition and Western nations as being detached from reality.

The plan offered dialogue with the opposition to end the conflict - but only with elements he deemed acceptable, not rebel-affiliated groups he termed "killers" and "terrorists" manipulated by foreign powers.

Referring to the so-called Arab Spring that has swept the region since late 2010, Brahimi said: "Now people want to have a say in how they are governed. They want to take hold of their own future.

"In Syria in particular, what people are saying is that one family ruling for 40 years is a little bit too long."

The stinging comments came ahead of talks in Geneva on Friday between Brahimi and US and Russian officials.

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