Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study

Researchers have chosen an experimental drug by Eli Lilly & Co. for a large federally funded study testing whether it's possible to prevent Alzheimer's disease in older people at high risk of developing it.

The drug, called solanezumab (sol-ah-NAYZ-uh-mab), is designed to bind to and help clear the sticky deposits that clog patients' brains.

Earlier studies found it did not help people with moderate to severe Alzheimer's but it showed some promise against milder disease. Researchers think it might work better if given before symptoms start.

"The hope is we can catch people before they decline," which can come 10 years or more after plaques first show up in the brain, said Dr. Reisa Sperling, director of the Alzheimer's center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

She will help lead the new study, which will involve 1,000 people ages 70 to 85 whose brain scans show plaque buildup but who do not yet have any symptoms of dementia. They will get monthly infusions of solanezumab or a dummy drug for three years. The main goal will be slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study will be done at 50 sites in the U.S. and possibly more in Canada, Australia and Europe, Sperling said.

In October, researchers said combined results from two studies of solanezumab suggested it might modestly slow mental decline, especially in patients with mild disease. Taken separately, the studies missed their main goals of significantly slowing the mind-robbing disease or improving activities of daily living.

Those results were not considered good enough to win the drug approval. So in December, Lilly said it would start another large study of it this year to try to confirm the hopeful results seen patients with mild disease. That is separate from the federal study Sperling will head.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

___

Online:

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

___

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

Read More..

Armstrong's Lowest Point Was Quitting Livestrong

Lance Armstrong, 41, said tonight that the lowest point in his fall from grace and the top of the cycling world came when his cancer charity, Livestrong, asked him to consider stepping down.

After the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released a report in October 2012 alleging Armstrong doped throughout his reign as Tour de France champion, Armstrong said a second installment of an interview with Oprah Winfrey, his major sponsors -- including Nike, Anheuser Busch and Trek -- called one by one to end their endorsement contracts with him.

"Everybody out," he said. "Still not the most humbling moment."

Then came the call from Livestrong, the charity he founded at age 25 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

"The story was getting out of control, which was my worst nightmare," he said. "I had this place in my mind that they would all leave. The one I didn't think would leave was the foundation.

"That was most humbling moment," he said.

Armstrong first stepped down as chairman of the board for the charity before being asked to end his association with the charity entirely. Livestrong is now run independently of Armstrong.

"I don't think it was 'We need you to step down,' but, 'We need you to consider stepping down for yourself,'" he said, recounting the call. "I had to think about that a lot. None of my kids, none of my friends have said, 'You're out,' and the foundation was like my sixth child. To make that decision, to step aside, that was big."

George Burns/Harpo Studios, Inc.

Lance Armstrong-Winfrey Interview: How Honest Was He? Watch Video

Lance Armstrong-Winfrey Interview: Doping Confession Watch Video

In the first part of the interview, broadcast Thursday, Armstrong admitted for the first time that his decade-long dominance of cycling and seven wins in the Tour de France were owed, in part, to performance-enhancing drugs and oxygen-boosting blood transfusions.

He told Winfrey that he was taking the opportunity to confess to everything he had done wrong, including for years angrily denying claims that he had doped.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

Armstrong said in the interview that he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.

Investigators familiar with Armstrong's case, however, told ABC News today that Armstrong did not come completely clean to Winfrey, and that they believed he doped in 2009.

They said that Armstrong's blood values at the 2009 race showed clear blood manipulation consistent with two transfusions. Armstrong's red blood cell count suddenly went up at these points, even though the number of baby red blood cells did not.

Investigators said that was proof that he received a transfusion of mature red blood cells.

READ MORE: Lance Armstrong May Have Lied to Winfrey: Investigators

If Armstrong lied about the 2009 race, it could be to protect himself criminally, investigators said.

Federal authorities looking to prosecute criminal cases will look back at the "last overt act" in which the crime was committed, they explained. If Armstrong doped in 2005 but not 2009, the statute of limitations may have expired on potential criminal activity.

The sources noted that there is no evidence right now that a criminal investigation will be reopened. Armstrong is facing at least three civil suits.

Read More..

Algeria ends desert siege, but dozens killed

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian forces stormed a desert gas complex to free hundreds of hostages but 30, including several Westerners, were killed in the assault along with at least 11 of their Islamist captors, an Algerian security source told Reuters.

Western leaders whose compatriots were being held did little to disguise their irritation at being kept in the dark by Algeria before the raid - and over its bloody outcome. French, British and Japanese staff were among the dead, the source said.

An Irish engineer who survived said he saw four jeeps full of hostages blown up by Algerian troops whose commanders said they moved in about 30 hours after the siege began because the gunmen had demanded to be allowed to take their captives abroad.

And while a crisis has ended that posed a serious dilemma for Paris and its allies as French troops attacked the hostage-takers' al Qaeda allies in neighboring Mali, it left question marks over the ability of OPEC-member Algeria to protect vital energy resources and strained its relations with Western powers.

Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among at least seven foreigners killed, the source told Reuters. Eight dead hostages were Algerian. The nationalities of the rest, as well as of perhaps dozens more who escaped, were unclear. Some 600 local Algerian workers, less well guarded, survived.

Fourteen Japanese were among those still unaccounted for by the early hours of Friday, their Japanese employer said.

Americans, Norwegians, Romanians and an Austrian have also been mentioned by their governments as having been captured by the militants who called themselves the "Battalion of Blood" and had demanded France end its week-old offensive in Mali.

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

The bodies of three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman were found, the security source said.

The group had claimed to have dozens of guerrillas on site and it was unclear whether any militants had managed to escape.

The overall commander, Algerian officials said, was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria's bloody civil war of the 1990s. He appears not to have been present and has now risen in stature among a host of Saharan Islamists, flush with arms and fighters from chaotic Libya, whom Western powers fear could spread violence far beyond the desert.

"NO TO BLACKMAIL"

Algeria's government spokesman made clear the leadership in Algiers remains implacably at odds with Islamist guerrillas who remain at large in the south years after the civil war in which some 200,000 people died. Communication Minister Mohamed Said repeated their refusal ever to negotiate with hostage-takers.

"We say that in the face of terrorism, yesterday as today as tomorrow, there will be no negotiation, no blackmail, no respite in the struggle against terrorism," he told APS news agency.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who warned people to prepare for bad news and who canceled a major policy speech on Friday to deal with the situation, said through a spokesman that he would have liked Algeria to have consulted before the raid.

A Briton and an Algerian had also been killed on Wednesday.

The prime minister of Norway, whose state energy company Statoil runs the Tigantourine gas field with Britain's BP and Algeria's national oil company, said he too was not informed.

U.S. officials had no clear information on the fate of Americans, though a U.S. military drone had flown over the area. Washington, like its European allies, has endorsed France's move to protect the Malian capital by mounting air strikes last week and now sending 1,400 ground troops to attack Islamist rebels.

A U.S. official said on Thursday it would provide transport aircraft to help France with a mission whose vital importance, President Francois Hollande said, was demonstrated by the attack in Algeria. Some fear, however, that going on the offensive in the remote region could provoke more bloodshed closer to home.

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 value of security measures that are outwardly draconian.

Foreign firms were pulling non-essential staff out of the country, which has recovered stability only in recent years and whose ruling establishment, heirs to fighters who ended French rule 50 years ago, has resisted demands for reform and political freedoms of the kind that swept North Africa in the Arab Spring.

"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."

"KILL INFIDELS"

A local man who had escaped from the facility told Reuters the militants appeared to have inside knowledge of the layout of the complex, supporting the view of security experts that their raid was long-planned, even if the Mali war provided a motive.

"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."

Algiers, whose leaders have long had frosty relations with the former colonial power France and other Western countries, may 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.

Government spokesman 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.

The militants said earlier they had 41 foreign hostages.

"ARMY BLASTED HOSTAGES"

Stephen McFaul, an electrical engineer, told his family in Northern Ireland after the operation that he narrowly escaped death, first when bound and gagged by the gunmen who fastened explosives around the hostages' necks and then on Thursday when he was in a convoy of five vehicles driving across the complex.

"(The gunmen) were moving five jeeploads of hostages from one part of the compound," his brother Brian McFaul said. "At that stage, they were intercepted by the Algerian army.

"The army bombed four out of five of the trucks and four of them were destroyed ... He presumed everyone else in the other trucks was killed ... The truck my brother was in crashed and at that stage Stephen was able to make a break for his freedom."

McFaul said it was unclear whether the vehicles had been struck by missiles fired from helicopters or by ground forces.

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.

"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 on Thursday.

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.

(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London and Padraic Halpin and Conor Humprhies in Dublin; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Peter Millership)

Read More..

Cycling: "One big lie" Armstrong says of 7 drug-fuelled Tours

LOS ANGELES: Lance Armstrong admitted his seven Tour de France titles were fuelled by an array of drugs, reversing years of denials in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey broadcast Thursday.

Attempting to explain his drug-tainted past, Armstrong sat down with Winfrey for his first interview since being stripped last year of his record seven Tour titles and banned from sport for life.

It was recorded on Monday in Austin, Texas, and was to be aired in two segments on Thursday and Friday on Winfrey's OWN television channel.

"I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there, the truth isn't what I said... This story was so perfect for so long... you overcome the disease, you win the Tour de France seven times, you have a happy marriage, you have children. I mean, it's just this mythic, perfect story," Armstrong said.

"And it wasn't true."

In an opening series of "yes" or "no" questions, Armstrong admitted using blood-boosting EPO, blood doping transfusions and testosterone or human growth hormone.

Armstrong told Winfrey he didn't believe it was possible to win the Tour in the years he raced without doping, and challenged the characterisation of the doping program on his US Postal Service team as the most sophisticated ever.

Hours before the kickoff, Armstrong saw another accolade withdrawn as the International Olympic Committee said it had asked him to return the cycling time-trial bronze medal he won in 2000.

The International Cycling Union last year upheld the US Anti-Doping Agency's ban of Armstrong, and the revocation of his cycling results from August 1998, but the IOC waited for three weeks to see if Armstrong planned an appeal.

While Winfrey confirmed on Tuesday reports that Armstrong had admitted using banned performance enhancers in their talk, little else was known of what he would reveal.

Speculation swirled as to whether he had implicated others -- notably members of the sport's world governing body -- amid allegations of complicity and cover-up.

The difficulty of untangling the doping web in cycling was again clear when the IOC's move recalled the 2000 Olympic time-trial medallists.

Abraham Olano of Spain, who was fourth, could inherit the bronze after finishing fourth in a race won by Armstrong's ex-US Post Service team-mate Viasheslav Ekimov, with Germany's Jan Ullrich taking silver.

Ekimov is now general manager of the Katusha cycling team that were dropped from the elite ProTeam list for this season because of their ambivalent stance on doping, and Ullrich eventually served a two-year ban for doping.

Some have speculated that Armstrong might attempt to rationalize doping as standard procedure in the years of his cycling career.

Certainly his admission, and his choice of the famously sympathetic Winfrey as confessor, are an about face after years of aggressive denials and often vitriolic attacks on those who doubted him.

"No one could have imagined only a few weeks ago that Lance Armstrong would make his confession publicly, that he would confess in public to having been doped," Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme told reporters in Paris.

"It's obviously something very important but I can't say more than that ... For us, Lance Armstrong is already in the past."

This week's exercise, however, is about the future, with Armstrong reportedly seeking a way back into sports and those in cycling wondering just who will be implicated in his revelations.

-AFP/fl

Read More..

MHA inquiry finds PCR response could have swifter in Nirbhaya case

NEW DELHI: An inquiry by the home ministry into allegations made by Nirbhaya's friend about the "tardy" response of Delhi Police in reaching her to hospital has found that the response time could indeed have been better.

The inquiry report by Veena Kumari Meena, a joint secretary in the home ministry, also said Dinesh Yadav, operator of the bus on which the gang rape took place, had been blatantly flouting norms by plying not only the rogue bus despite repeated challans, but was also running several other buses in his fleet without valid permits.

Sources in the government told TOI that Meena noted that though the PCRs responded to the distress call made on Nirbhaya's behalf within "reasonable" time and, as per PCR logs, left the spot within 15 minutes, this time could have been cut further had the police "reacted better" to the emergency.

Though exact details of the report are still awaited, sources hinted that the inquiry faulted Delhi Police for failing to immediately rush the victims to hospital despite the first PCR having reached the spot at 10.27 pm, by the police's own account. According to the Delhi Police, the control room received a call about the incident at 10.21 pm on December 16. PCR van Z-54 was assigned the call but another PCR, E-74, reached the spot on its own at 10.27 pm. Z-54 was there at 10.29 pm.

Z-54 finally left the spot with Nirbhaya and her friend at 10.39 pm, after arranging bed-sheets from a nearby hotel to cover them.

Nirbhaya's friend had, in an interview to a news channel, alleged that the PCRs which reached the spot wasted crucial time in arguing over jurisdiction and that the police were reluctant to shift an injured Nirbhaya to the PCR.

However, joint commissioner of police Vivek Gogia denied this, saying, "There was no issue over jurisdiction as PCR vans do not operate under police stations."

The inquiry was set up on January 7 to assess the alacrity of Delhi Police as well as the response of Safdarjung Hospital staff to the December 16 rape. Meena was asked to identify lapses and fix responsibility.

The terms of reference also included examining how the rogue bus continued to ply on Delhi roads despite being challaned several times, and to study the responsiveness of Dial 100 helpline.

Read More..

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

Read More..

Lance Armstrong Confesses to Doping

Lance Armstrong, formerly cycling's most decorated champion and considered one of America's greatest athletes, confessed to cheating for at least a decade, admitting on Thursday that he owed all seven of his Tour de France titles and the millions of dollars in endorsements that followed to his use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.

After years of denying that he had taken banned drugs and received oxygen-boosting blood transfusions, and attacking his teammates and competitors who attempted to expose him, Armstrong came clean with Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive interview, confessing to using banned substances for decades.

"I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times," he said.

In October, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a report in which 11 former teammates exposed the system with which they and Armstrong received drugs with the knowledge of their coaches and help of team physicians.

READ MORE: Did Doping Cause Armstrong's Cancer?

George Burns/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc./AP Photo

Lance Armstrong's Oprah Confession: The Consequences Watch Video

Lance Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape Watch Video

Lance Armstrong's Winfrey Confession: The Fallout Watch Video

The U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team "ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," USADA said in its report.

Armstrong said he was driven to cheat by a "ruthless desire to win."

He told Winfrey that his competition "cocktail" consisted of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone, and that he had previously used cortisone.

He said he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the race again in 2010.

"It was a mythic perfect story and it wasn't true," Armstrong said of his fairytale story of overcoming testicular cancer to become the most celebrated cyclist in history.

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

Armstrong would not name other members of his team who doped, but admitted that as the team's captain he set an example. He admitted he was "a bully" but said there "there was a never a directive," from him that his teammates had to use banned substances.

"At the time it did not feel wrong?" Winfrey asked.

"No," Armstrong said. "Scary."

"Did you feel bad about it?" she asked again.

"No," he said.

Also on Thursday, before the Winfrey interview aired, the International Olympic Committee stripped Armstrong his of 2000 Olympic bronze medal.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

Read More..

Sahara hostage siege turns Mali war global

ALGIERS/BAMAKO (Reuters) - Islamist fighters have opened an international front in Mali's civil war by taking dozens of Western hostages at a gas plant in the Algerian desert just as French troops launched an offensive against rebels in neighboring Mali.

Nearly 24 hours after gunmen stormed the natural gas pumping site and workers' housing before dawn on Wednesday, little was certain beyond a claim by a group calling itself the "Battalion of Blood" that it was holding 41 foreign nationals, including Americans, Japanese and Europeans, at Tigantourine, deep in the Sahara.

Algerian media said a Briton and an Algerian were killed in the assault. Another local report said a Frenchman had died.

One thing is clear: as a headline-grabbing counterpunch to this week's French buildup in Mali, it presents French President Francois Hollande with a daunting dilemma and spreads fallout from Mali's war against loosely allied bands of al Qaeda-inspired rebels far beyond Africa, challenging Washington and Europe.

A French businessman with employees at the site said the foreigners were bound and under tight guard, while local staff, numbering 150 or more, was held apart and had more freedom.

Led by an Algerian veteran of guerrilla wars in Afghanistan, the group demanded France halt its week-old intervention in Mali, an operation endorsed by 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 haven in the desert.

Hollande, who won wide praise for ordering air strikes and sending troops to the former French colony, said little in response. In office for only eight months, he has warned of a long, hard struggle in Mali and now faces a risk of attacks on more French and other Western targets in Africa and beyond.

The Algerian government ruled out negotiating and the United States and other Western governments condemned what they called a terrorist attack on a facility, now shut down, that produces 10 percent of Algeria's gas, much of which is pumped to Europe.

The militants, communicating through established contacts with media in neighboring Mauritania, said they had dozens of men at the base, near the town of In Amenas close to the Libyan border, and that they were armed with mortars and anti-aircraft missiles.

They said they had repelled a raid by Algerian forces after dark on Wednesday. There was no government comment on that. Algerian officials said earlier about 20 gunmen were involved.

LIVES AT RISK

The militants issued no explicit threat but made clear 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 carried by Mauritanian media.

The group also said its fighters had rigged explosives around the site and any attempt to free the hostages would lead to a "tragic end." The large numbers of gunmen and hostages involved pose serious problems for any rescue operation.

Smaller hostage-taking incidents have been common in the Sahara and financial gain plays a part in the actions of groups whose members mingle extremist religious aims with traditional smuggling and other pursuits in the lawless, borderless region.

Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said the raid was led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and recently 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.

French media said the militants were also demanding that Algeria, whose government fought a bloody war against Islamists in the 1990s, release dozens of prisoners from its jails.

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

U.S. 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.

Panetta said Washington was still studying legal and other issues before providing more help to France in the war in Mali.

Hollande has called for international support against rebels 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 amputations and beheading.

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

Some of those held at the facility, 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 supervises some 150 Algerian employees at the site. Regis Arnoux of CIS Catering told BFM television the local staff was being prevented from leaving but was 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

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.

West African military chiefs said the French would soon be supported by about 2,000 troops from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and other states - part of a U.N.-mandated deployment that had been expected to start in September before Hollande intervened.

Chad's foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, told Radio France International his country alone would send 2,000 troops, suggesting plans for the regional force were already growing.

In Mali, residents said a column of some 30 French Sagaie armored vehicles had 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, although some also fear being caught in the cross-fire.

Hollande said on Tuesday that French forces would remain in Mali until stability returned to the West African nation.

The conflict, in 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.

But many who have lived for many months under harsh and violent Islamist rule said they welcomed the French.

"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 Peter Cooney)

Read More..

Football: Hodgson eyes long-awaited England glory

LONDON: As the Football Association begins its 150th anniversary year, England manager Roy Hodgson has challenged his players to provide the ultimate celebration by at least putting themselves in contention to end almost half a century without a trophy.

Hodgson is the latest in a string of managers charged with ending England's wait for a first major honour since their lone World Cup final triumph, against the then West Germany at London's Wembley Stadium in 1966.

But after helping the FA launch its landmark birthday on the London site of its first meeting, the current incumbent in the so-called 'impossible job' refused to accept it may take another 50 years to replicate.

"There's always hope," Hodgson insisted. "Hope springs eternal. But what you have to do to win tournaments is make sure you're regularly among the ones who are up there with a possibility of winning.

"You could compare it to someone who is an amateur darts player. The more darts he throws in and around the centre, one day he will get it in the bullseye.

"If he's spreading them around the board your chances will be less than if he's getting them in the 25 circle."

Hodgson took England to the quarter-finals at Euro 2012, only losing on penalties to Italy -- even though his team's performances were often described as limited by many critics who yearn for England to rely more on technique and finesse than just their famous bulldog spirit.

The FA shares the same ambition; which is why it has built a national academy in central England at St George's Park -- a school for coaches where all 24 national teams will also be based.

And although Hodgson knows any rewards from that venture are a long way down the line, he hasn't ruled out a degree of short-term success if England qualify for the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil.

"The first thing we have to do of course is qualify for the tournament," he said. "And then when we qualify it will be important that we give a very good account of ourselves at the World Cup in Brazil. And who knows, once you are there you have a chance of winning it.

"I think we have some very good young players coming into the game playing regularly now and showing that they do have the ability to shoulder the burden."

Hodgson was joined at The FA's anniversary launch by several former England managers including Sven-Goran Eriksson, Terry Venables and Fabio Capello, who left the role in controversial circumstances following a row over a decision to strip John Terry of the England captaincy.

But the Italian was all smiles as he said: "We are all friends now. It is very good to come back and see the people I used to work with. I have no problems with anyone.

"You know I can't talk about what happened with England but I am enjoying my life with Russia and my hope is that we play England in Brazil at the World Cup. That would be very good I think."

FA chairman David Bernstein welcomed Capello's participation by insisting: "Fabio is a man of great dignity and I respect him enormously.

"To see him today (Wednesday) and the warmth he showed, and there was a great deal of warmth when we met each other was really fabulous. It's the way it should be. There were hugs all round."

Meanwhile it emerged the FA, which has already arranged anniversary England friendlies against Brazil, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, was also looking to fit in matches against Argentina and Germany at Wembley in October and November.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Tiff over liqour shop stake led to Hindu terror accused Joshi's murder?

NEW DELHI: There could be more personal and local reasons behind the murder of key Hindu terror accused Sunil Joshi than the larger motive of protecting the saffron module from being exposed.

Investigations into the December 2007 murder case by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) have found that a liquor shop on Indore-Dewas road in Madhya Pradesh had become a bone of contention among saffron terror accused with many of them, including Joshi, having stakes in it.

Until now, investigating agencies, including the Madhya Pradesh Police, which has filed a charge-sheet in the case against 2008 Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur, have maintained that Joshi was killed because the group suspected he could spill the beans on saffron terror module. Another reason cited was that Joshi had misbehaved with Thakur in a manner that had angered the group.

It has now been revealed, however, that Joshi and his confidante Lokesh Sharma — accused in Samjhauta Express and 2006 Malegaon blasts — were partners in a liquor shop in Dakachya village on the Indore-Dewas road. There were others in the group too who had stakes in the shop that was reportedly highly profitable.

Sources say, during 2006-07, a dispute arose among the group on profit sharing and led to animosity between Joshi and others in the group. In fact, Joshi and others had even stopped talking months before he was shot dead in Dewas on December 29, 2007.

After NIA arrested Rajender Chaudhary last month in connection with the Samjhauta Express blast he revealed his and Lokesh Sharma's hand behind Joshi's murder. Madhya Pradesh Police has charge-sheeted an entirely different set of people for the murder.

On Monday, NIA made the first arrest in connection with the case when it picked up one Balbir Singh from Indore's Mandalwada village. Balbir too has been found to be linked to the liquor shop through one Jitendra Patel, a close aide of Joshi who died of cancer last year. Patel, who hails from Dakachya and had a partnership in the liquor shop, was associated with Singh.

NIA sources said, they had conducted raids at the residences of both Singh and Jitendra Patel and recovered a 9 mm pistol magazine from the former's house. "We suspect that this magazine may belong to the pistol that was used to kill Joshi. However, things will be clear only after forensic examination," said an NIA official.

Read More..