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Anis Belghoul/Associated Press
Algerian Army vehicles on Sunday near a remote town in southeastern Algeria where hostages were taken in a four-day ordeal.
ALGIERS — In his first official tally of the deadly scope of the Algerian hostage crisis, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said Monday that the known death toll among the foreign captives had risen steeply to 37 from 23, and that five additional foreigners remained unaccounted for.
In a televised news conference, Mr. Sellal also said that 29 militants were killed and that three were captured alive during the four-day ordeal that terrorized a remote Algerian gas field refining site. Two of the attackers were Canadian, he contended.
Algerian officials had been forecasting that the tally of foreign dead would rise from a preliminary estimate of 23, a concern that was reinforced by reports that a significant number of hostages from Japan and the Philippines had been killed at the site. On Monday, the Algerian prime minister said the dead came from eight different nations, without specifying which ones. He also said that one Algerian hostage had been killed as well.
Mr. Sellal was more specific about the attackers, saying at the news conference that they had come from Egypt, Canada, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Tunisia, although it was unclear how he knew for sure. Algerian officials have been saying that few if any of the attackers are believed to have been Algerian.
The prime minister asserted that the attackers had started out in northern Mali — a claim made by the attackers themselves, which had initially been dismissed by the Algerian authorities as far-fetched because the Malian border is hundreds of miles away.
But the prime minister added that the attackers had ultimately crossed into Algeria through its eastern border with Libya, which is much closer to the refining site. If true, it would serve as a powerful a reminder of Libya’s instability since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi more than a year ago, and of the enormous distances that complicate the monitoring of national boundaries in the vast Sahara.
“We would need two NATOs to monitor our borders,” Mr. Sellal said.
He corroborated assertions made by other Algerian officials and accounts from freed hostages that the militants had intended to destroy the gas complex and had booby-trapped some hostages with explosives.
In all, the prime minister said, 790 workers were on the site, including 134 foreigners of 26 nationalities, when it was first seized by a heavily armed militant band in one of the most brazen assaults in years.
The prime minister’s news conference represented the most detailed Algerian tally of casualties in the days of alternating standoff and confrontation that began early on Wednesday as the raiders swept in from the desert to take over the internationally managed gas plant, hundreds of miles from Algiers.
Earlier Monday, the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department announced casualties among its citizens for the first time, saying six Filipino hostages had been killed and four were still missing.
Additionally, citing an unidentified government source, Reuters said Algeria had informed Japan that nine of its citizens had died — if corroborated, the highest death toll by a nation reported so far — while previous Japanese accounts had spoken of 10 unaccounted for. Officials in Tokyo declined to confirm those figures, but news reports quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as saying that seven Japanese captives died and that three were still unaccounted for.
Japan’s NHK television interviewed an unidentified Algerian worker who escaped the gas plant. He said that not long after sporadic firing started, militants appeared, armed with machine guns, antitank rockets and antiaircraft missiles. He said the attackers were kind to Algerian staff members, who were given food and blankets. Their targets were the foreign workers, who were rounded up.
The first ones he saw killed were two Japanese and a Filipino, gunned down before his eyes. He said the militants made the foreign hostages wear bombs strapped onto their bodies. He fled during the army attack, and did not know if those foreigners had survived.
The standoff between several dozen radical Islamists and Algerian security services came to a bloody conclusion on Saturday when the Algerians assaulted the kidnappers’ last redoubt at the refining site, where hundreds of Algerian and scores of expatriate workers were employed.
The victims — from the United States, Britain, France, Japan and other countries — were killed after hours of harrowing captivity. An unknown number of the hostages died in the assault on Saturday; Algerian officials said they also killed most of the remaining hostage takers, who they said were followers of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a warlord linked to Al Qaeda based in northern Mali. A regional Web site reported that he had issued a video claiming responsibility for the attack.
NEW YORK (AP) — Video game maker Atari’s U.S. operations have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an effort to separate from their French parent company.
In a statement, Atari says the move is necessary to secure investments it needs to grow in mobile and digital gaming.
Atari’s U.S. operations have shifted to focus on digital games and licensing, including developing mobile games, and have become a growth engine for its owner. France’s Infogrames Entertainment first took a stake in Atari in 2000. It acquired the remaining stake in 2008 and changed its name to Atari S.A.
But the U.S. operations have been better performing than the rest of the company. In fiscal 2012 digital and licensing revenue both grew significantly and contributed 70 percent of revenue, while sales in bricks-and-mortar stores declined.
In December, Atari S.A. said a credit agreement it entered into with investor BlueBay would lapse at the end of the year and the company was seeking other ways to raise capital. It added that it expects to report a “significant loss” for fiscal 2012.
Atari, which turned 40 last year, was a videogame pioneer with games like “Pong” and “Centipede,” but has changed owners several times amid financial problems. In its filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, Atari said it had $ 1 million to $ 10 million in assets and $ 10 million to $ 50 million in debt. It is seeking approval for $ 5.25 million in debtor-in-possession financing from private investment firm Tenor Capital Management.
Atari said it expects to sell its assets or confirm a restructuring plan within the next three to six months.
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
From left: Sasha, Malia and Michelle Obama on Jan. 21, 2013
Mark Wilson/Getty
While watching President Barack Obama be sworn in publicly for his second term in office, Michelle Obama and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, looked on proudly from the platform in front of the Capitol.
But not all eyes were on the Commander in Chief, who officially started his term on Sunday. Many Inauguration watchers are eager to see what the women in his life are wearing.
The First Lady, who is sporting a new do, dressed in a navy Thom Browne coat and dress with the fabric inspired by the textures of a man's silk tie.
She accessorized with Reed Krakoff boots and a jeweled belt and gloves from J. Crew and earrings designed by Cathy Waterman. At the end of the Inaugural festivities, Michelle's entire outfit will go to the National Archives.
Malia, 14, also wore an ensemble by J. Crew, including the Double-cloth Lady coat in plum. And her sister Sasha, 11, wore a Kate Spade coat and dress.
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
An FBI agent testified Friday that he had sex with
an employee of a karaoke bar in the Philippines whom he met while working
undercover on a case involving weapons smuggling.
Marc Napolitano was working as a member of a surveillance team
during meetings at karaoke bars in which another undercover agent, Charles
Ro, spent time with three Filipino nationals now accused of smuggling
weapons into the U.S.
Napolitano received text messages from several young Filipino
women on a cellphone paid for by the government, he said. One woman, who went
by the name Maui, came to his hotel room -- also paid for by the
government -- where they had sex, he said.
Napolitano testified as part of a defense motion seeking to throw
out the criminal charges against the defendants. A deputy federal public
defender representing one of the three defendants has alleged the government
committed "outrageous government misconduct" while investigating the
case.
Defense attorneys have
accused agents of spending taxpayer dollars during their investigation in
karaoke bars that were widely-known to offer prostitution.
Government attorneys and agents dispute the allegations.
Napolitano denied Maui was a prostitute and said he never paid to
have sex while working on the investigation.
The defense motion is expected to continue Tuesday.
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-- Hailey Branson-Potts
WASHINGTON — Here are two realities about U.S. second presidential terms: They aren’t cursed, as legend has it, and they are rarely better than first ones.
On Sunday, Barack Obama was to become the 17th U.S. president to be inaugurated for a second time, and historians offer useful context. “Obama has read the literature and understands overreach,” said Michael Beschloss, one of the more than half a dozen scholars who recently had dinner with the president. “This puts him one step ahead of most” re-elected presidents.
That sentiment contrasts with the mood of many Democrats these days. In conversations with a dozen Democratic politicians, with a few exceptions, there is a pervasive pessimism about the next several years. Almost all requested anonymity, not out of fear, they say, but to avoid giving solace to Republicans.
The political environment, they say, is as poisonous as it ever was.
The fiscal struggles won’t be settled in the next few months; more likely they’ll be prolonged through the year, crowding out most other issues, with the possible exception of immigration and conceivably gun violence legislation.
The president shows few signs of reaching out or broadening his horizon. If anything, Capitol Hill Democrats say, the inner circle is more closed. Mr. Obama, most recently at a news conference last week, deprecates the role of relationships in politics; he’s dismissive of the notion that all would be better if he would just drink whiskey with lawmakers, as Lyndon B. Johnson did. He’s right. Few will shift policy positions because of a good Scotch or bourbon. Yet his critics also are right when they point out that every successful president has forged crucial political relationships.
Some conditions are beyond a president’s control to influence. Saturation news coverage takes more of a toll in a second term. “One of the greatest threats to the modern presidency is overexposure,” said the historian Richard Norton Smith. “There will be Obama fatigue.”
Then there’s the supposed second-term curse: Johnson and the Vietnam War; Richard M. Nixon and Watergate; Bill Clinton and impeachment; George W. Bush and Hurricane Katrina.
Robert W. Merry, who has written about how presidents are evaluated, suggested “it’s almost impossible to find a president who had a second term better than his first.”
Presidents usually win re-election because they had a reasonably successful first term; that, some experts point out, distorts any comparisons, a state of affairs that became apparent with one of the earliest U.S. presidential re-elections: that of Thomas Jefferson in 1804.
“You can’t buy Louisiana every term,” Mr. Norton-Smith said. “That doesn’t mean there can’t be accomplishments.”
Ronald Reagan, in his second term, won sweeping tax changes and a historical arms-reduction treaty with the Soviet Union. Even some administrations known for conspicuous failings look better with perspective.
Franklin D. Roosevelt botched the economic recovery and tried to pack the Supreme Court in the late 1930s. He also, subtly, prepared the United States for World War II, a bigger achievement. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s party was clobbered in congressional elections, and he was embarrassed when a spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. He also sent U.S. troops to integrate the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, a seminal moment. Mr. Clinton’s second term produced few tangible achievements, though he continued to reposition the Democratic Party.
Today, the second-term optimists among Democrats say the president is contending with a much stronger and stable economy than the one he inherited four years ago. They see a more self-assured chief executive. One outside operative contrasts a session he had with Mr. Obama four years ago with one a few weeks ago, saying the president is a different man, more confident, clearer on what he wants to do.
Mr. Obama no longer harbors illusions, these Democrats say, about Republican congressional leaders. He’s willing, even eager, for combat. Republicans, whose standing with the public continues its free fall, are one of Mr. Obama’s greatest assets.
Whatever the political limitations, historians say Mr. Obama needs to think big, starting with his second Inaugural Address.
“He has a chance to explain where America ought to be in 10 or 20 years,” said H.W. Brands of the University of Texas at Austin, who also attended the scholars’ dinner with the president. “He can rise above everyday politics and speak to history. Lincoln did it in 1865; F.D.R. in 1937. Now it’s Obama’s chance.”
Some Democrats say the president would be able to make a more compelling case if his inner circle weren’t so insular. The Team of Rivals of the early first term, when the president brought in diverse voices, has turned into the Band of Brothers, with a premium on personal loyalty. Top White House aides have let it be known that they will be making more personnel and policy decisions in the economics and foreign affairs arenas.
And while Mr. Obama may appreciate the dangers of second-term overreach, he’s quick to claim a mandate on issues, an assertion with a dubious historical resonance.
“Presidents should erase the word ‘mandate’ from their vocabulary,” Mr. Norton Smith said. “At best, it’s treacherous.”
Apple needs a new product targeting its next generation of customers which will be fueled by this newly announced product
“iPotty: Brilliant, or worst idea ever? Experts weigh in on new potty training device – Unveiled last week at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the base of the iPotty looks like a regular ol’ plastic toilet with removable bowl— but there’s an adjustable stand attached, specifically for an iPad.”
Something easy to clean which will survive toddlers dropping them into their training potty.
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
The Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes actress had an impromptu photo shoot with a young girl when she visited the Variety Studio in Park City, Utah, on Saturday.
The duo posed for multiple shots in a photo booth until they got a snapshot that was "just right," an onlooker tells PEOPLE.
"They were having a great time," the source adds.
– Patrick Gomez
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 the 40 percent of American private-sector 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 Sinesky, 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 Sinesky, 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
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