22 killed in third day of deadly Iraq violence

BAGHDAD: A spate of bombings targeting Shiite Muslims across Iraq killed 22 people on Thursday, the latest in a spike in unrest amid weeks of anti-government protests and a political crisis engulfing the country.

The attacks marked the third consecutive day of violence which has claimed 81 lives overall, including that of a Sunni Iraqi MP killed by a suicide bomber and 33 others who died in twin car bombs in an ethnically mixed northern city.

It comes as Iraq grapples with a long-running political dispute, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki facing protests hardening opposition against his rule and calls from many of his erstwhile government partners for his ouster.

No group has claimed responsibility for the latest bombings, but Sunni militants often launch attacks in a bid to destabilise the government and push Iraq back towards the sectarian violence that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.

The bloodiest of Thursday's blasts took place in Dujail, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, where a car bomb outside a Shiite mosque killed nine people and wounded 56 others, said town mayor Mohammed Hassan.

A car bomb killed seven other people and wounded 17 near a football stadium on the outskirts of the predominantly Shiite city of Hilla, south of the capital, officials said.

Witnesses reported residents throwing stones at a police officer after he blamed locals for helping militants carry out the bombing. Police in the town where the attack took place said the officer was later detained.

Bombings also struck Baghdad, Hawija and Karbala, while two soldiers and two policemen were killed in separate shootings near the northern cities of Mosul and Tuz Khurmatu.

There were no casualties in Hawija but two people were killed and one wounded in a roadside bomb in north Baghdad.

And in Karbala, a Shiite shrine city south of the capital, 17 people were wounded, including eight Afghan Shiite pilgrims, in a morning blast, followed by two explosions in the evening that left at least seven more injured.

Afghan ambassador to Baghdad Mohammed Anwarzai confirmed to AFP that a number of his compatriots were wounded in the morning blast.

The violence comes a day after 49 people were killed in attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital -- Iraq's bloodiest day since November 29 -- including seven who died from twin car bombs in the city of Kirkuk.

On Tuesday, a suicide attacker killed a Sunni Iraqi MP, Ayfan al-Essawi, west of Baghdad. Hundreds of mourners attended Essawi's funeral outside the mostly Sunni town of Fallujah on Wednesday.

The lawmaker was a former leader of the Sahwa -- Sunni tribal militias who turned against Al-Qaeda and sided with the US military from late 2006, helping to turn the tide of Iraq's bloody insurgency.

Sahwa fighters are frequently targeted for attacks by Sunni militants who view them as traitors.

The violence comes amid a political crisis that has pitted Maliki against several of his ministers just months ahead of key provincial elections.

Weeks of anti-government demonstrations in Sunni Arab majority areas, supported by several parties that are members of Maliki's unity cabinet, have hardened opposition against the premier, a Shiite.

The violence and political disputes come with barely three months to go before provincial elections, Iraq's first polls in three years and a key barometer to gauge the popularity of Maliki and his rivals.

Attacks in Iraq are down from their peak in 2006-2007, but they are still common across the country.

- AFP/jc

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Troubleshooting a freezing or hanging OS X menu bar

The OS X menu bar is a central location for accessing system resources in the Apple menu, application-specific menus, and also a number of system settings through menu extras that can be appended to the right side of the menu bar. Some extras that are on by default include the time and date, battery level, and volume control, but others can be added to the bar, including VPN status, keychain, the script menu, and Bluetooth status.

Though these menu extras are convenient, there may be times when problems occur with this part of the system menu, such as freezes and hangs. Typically, only the right-side of the menu bar will hang, so while you can still access the File, Edit, and Apple menus among others to the left of the bar, when you move your mouse to the right you will see it turn to the spinning color wheel or otherwise be nonfunctional.

This problem usually happens because of incompatibilities with third-party menu extras installed on your system. The menu extra feature in OS X is a convenient way for developers to give quick access to their programs' features, and is often used for malware scanners, firewalls and filters, input managers, and network monitors to give you quick updates on their activities.

So, if you are experiencing problems with the menu bar hanging, try first updating any program you have installed that uses the menu bar. A common one that has resulted in menu bar hangs is the popular iStats Menu system monitor, but others may cause issues as well and a quick update should make sure they are the version that's most compatible with your version of OS X.

Another source for menu bar hangs may be problems with the menu bar setup in OS X, so removing the preferences file that manages the menu bar may help. To do this, in the Finder choose "Library" from the Go menu (for Mountain Lion users hold the Option key to reveal the Library in this menu). Then go to the Preferences folder and remove the file called "com.apple.systemuiserver.plist." Then log out and back in to your system.

Do keep in mind that deleting the SystemUIServer preferences file will leave you with a default set of menu extras, so you will have to manually re-enable and rearrange them.

Finally, if a third-party menu extra is simply not compatible and despite being updated is still showing buggy behavior in OS X, then the best approach is to disable this program's menu extra or remove the program from the system. While menu extras are mostly intended to be quick-access options for program settings that can be enabled or disabled, some programs operate entirely through the menu extra or have one that is enabled at all times.

In addition, some programs use an older approach to programming menu extras and so they're treated slightly differently in the menu bar. These extras load after the default menu extras, and are usually appended to the left of the menu extras. A good way to identify these is to try moving them around the menu bar by holding the Command key and then clicking and dragging. If the modern approach to menu extras was used, then this action should allow you to move the menu extra around; if it's an older extra, it will stay put. (Granted, you can only apply this test when the menu bar is not currently hanging.)

This is often an easy way to identify third-party menu extras that may be the source of the problem, so you can then go about testing each by uninstalling, quitting, or otherwise disabling them to troubleshoot the menu hangs you are experiencing.

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Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

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Some children may lose autism diagnosis with age

Some children diagnosed with autism in early childhood may no longer have the disorder as they grow older, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health.

"Although the diagnosis of autism is not usually lost over time, the findings suggest that there is a very wide range of possible outcomes," said Dr. Thomas R. Insel, NIMH director, said in a press release. "For an individual child, the outcome may be knowable only with time and after some years of intervention."

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of developmental disorders that cause behavioral, social and communication problems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate one in 88 children have an ASD.

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Headlines: Report says kids can grow out of autism

The new study looked at 34 children between 8 and 21 who had an "optimal outcome," meaning they were diagnosed with autism earlier in life but functioned normally compared to their peers later on. These subjects were matched by age, sex, and nonverbal IQ with 44 children with high-functioning autism and an additional 34 typically developing peers.

The researchers reviewed their initial diagnoses to make sure they were accurate and enlisted a second diagnostic expert, who didn't know the child's status, to review reports where the initial diagnosis had been removed.

What they discovered was the "optimal outcome" children had milder social problems than those in the high-functioning autism group in early childhood. Verbal IQ of "optimal outcome" children were slightly higher than high-functioning autism individuals. However when it came to communication and behavioral problems, there were similarities to the high-functioning subjects.

The researchers then examined all the subjects using standard cognitive tests and parent questionnaires. The "optimal outcome" children were all in regular education classes with no special education aimed at autism. The whole group showed no signs of problems with language, face recognition, communication, and social interaction.

Researchers cannot speculate which percentage of children will outgrow their ASD, but they are hoping that through the research they gathered they can see whether the diagnosis changed because brain function normalized or the brain was able to make up for autism-related deficiencies.

10 Photos

Is it autism? Facial features that show disorder

"All children with ASD are capable of making progress with intensive therapy, but with our current state of knowledge most do not achieve the kind of optimal outcome that we are studying," study author Deborah Fein, a professor at the Department of Psychology at University of Connecticut, said in a press release. "Our hope is that further research will help us better understand the mechanisms of change so that each child can have the best possible life."

The study published Jan. 16 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Researchers are also looking at which therapies led to the most success. Fein told HealthDay she believed behavioral treatments were the most likely to result in an "optimal outcome." However, even for children that lose the diagnosis, she said that parents should not stop therapy "prematurely" since these children are still at risk for attention problems and anxiety.

"But I want to point out that this is the result of years of hard work," she added. "This is not anything that happens overnight. I would say that at minimum we're talking about two to three years of intensive therapy to produce this outcome, but it could also be five years. It's variable.

"This is the first solid science to address this question of possible recovery, and I think it has big implications," added Dr. Sally Ozonoff of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the study, to the New York Times. "I know many of us as would rather have had our tooth pulled than use the word 'recover,' it was so unscientific. Now we can use it, though I think we need to stress that it's rare."

But, other experts warned that parents shouldn't get their hopes up that their child will outgrow their diagnosis.

"This study is looking at a small sample of high functioning people with autism and we would urge people not to jump to conclusions about the nature and complexity of autism, as well its longevity," Dr. Judith Gould, director of the National Autistic Society's Lorna Wing Centre for Autism, told the BBC. "With intensive therapy and support, it's possible for a small sub-group of high functioning individuals with autism to learn coping behaviors and strategies which would 'mask' their underlying condition and change their scoring in the diagnostic tests used to determine their condition in this research."

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Football Star Manti Te'o Faces Tough Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it won't be easy.

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

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

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

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

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

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

What is clear is that Te'o tweeted Kekua twice after she was reported to have died on Sept. 11 or 12, 2012.

On Sept. 12, the day after his grandmother's death, Te'o tweeted to his purportedly deceased girlfriend, "You will always be with me wherever I go! Tell dad, BJ, papa Ima, papa Santiago, and grandma that I said hello! I love you! #574L."

Nearly two months later, on Nov. 6, he tweeted her again saying, "I miss you!"

Those tweets may be an indication of his sincerity or, to skeptics, elaborately planted fake evidence of his heartbreak.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here for more scandalous public confessions.

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

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

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Dozens held after Islamists attack Algerian gas field

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Islamist militants attacked a gas field in Algeria on Wednesday, claiming to have kidnapped up to 41 foreigners including seven Americans in a dawn raid in retaliation for France's intervention in Mali, according to regional media reports.

The raiders were also reported to have killed three people, including a Briton and a French national.

An al Qaeda affiliated group said the raid had been carried out because of Algeria's decision to allow France to use its air space for attacks against Islamists in Mali, where French forces have been in action against al Qaeda-linked militants since last week.

The attack in southern Algeria also raised fears that the French action in Mali could prompt further Islamist revenge attacks on Western targets in Africa, where al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) operates across borders in the Sahara desert, and in Europe.

AQIM said it had carried out Wednesday's raid on the In Amenas gas facility in OPEC member Algeria, Mauritania's ANI news agency reported.

The Algerian interior ministry said: "A terrorist group, heavily armed and using three vehicles, launched an attack this Wednesday at 5 a.m. against a Sonatrach base in Tigantourine, near In Amenas, about 100 km (60 miles) from the Algerian and Libyan border."

"The Algerian authorities will not respond to the demands of the terrorists and will not negotiate," Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia was quoted as saying by official news agency APS.

The gas field is operated by a joint venture including BP, Norwegian oil firm Statoil and Algerian state company Sonatrach.

ARMED MEN

BP said armed men were still occupying facilities at the gas field, which produces 9 billion cubic meters of gas a year(160,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day), more than a tenth of the country's overall gas output, and 60,000 barrels a day of condensate.

"The site was attacked and occupied by a group of unidentified armed people at about 0500 UK time. Contact with the site is extremely difficult, but we understand that armed individuals are still occupying the In Amenas operations site," it said.

APS said a Briton and an Algerian security guard had been killed and seven people were injured. A French national was also killed in the attack, a local source said.

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

The U.S. State Department said it believed some U.S. citizens were also among the hostages, while Norway said 13 of its nationals were involved.

A member of an Islamist group styling itself the "Blood Battalion" was quoted by Mauritanian media as saying that five of the hostages were being held at the gas facility and 36 were in a housing area. APS said the Islamist raiders had freed Algerians working at the gas facility.

"The operation was in response to the blatant interference by Algeria and the opening of its air space to French aircraft to bomb northern Mali," the Islamist spokesman told Mauritania's ANI news agency.

ANI, which has regular direct contact with Islamists, said that fighters under the command of Mokhtar Belmokhtar were holding the foreigners.

Belmokhtar for years commanded al Qaeda fighters in the Sahara before setting up his own armed Islamist group late last year after an apparent fallout with other militant leaders.

The Algerian army was in the area of the gas facility, according to French and Algerian sources.

ANI also reported that the Islamists said they were surrounded by Algerian forces and warned that any attempt to free the hostages would lead to a "tragic end". One of the hostage takers told ANI that the perimeter of the site had been mined.

SECURITY IMPLICATIONS

The attack was the first time in years that Islamist militants are known to have launched an attack on an Algerian energy facility.

The attack could have implications for security across the whole of Algeria's energy sector, which supplies about a quarter of Europe's natural gas imports and exports millions of barrels of crude oil each year.

Such an attack would require a large and heavily armed insurgent force with a degree of freedom to move around, all elements that al Qaeda has not previously had.

However, the conflict in neighboring Libya in 2011 changed the balance of force. Security experts say al Qaeda was able to obtain arms, including heavy weapons, from the looted arsenals of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Statoil, a minority shareholder in the gas venture, said it had 17 employees at the plant and four of them had been evacuated. The company declined to comment on the other 13.

The five Japanese work for the engineering firm JGC Corporation, Jiji news agency reported, quoting company officials. JGC has a deal with Sonatrach-BP-Statoil Association for work in gas production at In Amenas.

A reporter for Japan's NHK television managed to call a JGC worker in Algeria.

The worker said he got a phone call from a colleague at the gas field. "It was around 6 a.m. this morning. He said that he had been hearing gunshots for about 20 minutes. I wasn't able to get through to him since."

French troops launched their first ground operation against Islamist rebels in Mali on Wednesday in an action to dislodge from a strategic town al Qaeda-linked fighters who have resisted six days of air strikes.

(Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer and John Irish in Paris, Laurent Prieur in Nouakchott, Andrew Osborn in London, Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Antoni Slodkowski in Tokyo, Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi and Christian Lowe in Warsaw; Editing by Giles Elgood and Will Waterman)

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Netanyahu to Obama: only Israel knows its own best interests

JERUSALEM: Only the people of Israel can decide who will represent their best interests, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday in remarks directed at US President Barack Obama a week before a general election.

"I think everyone knows that the citizens of Israel are the only ones who can decide who will faithfully represent the vital interests of the state," he said.

His remarks came in response to an article by prominent Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg in which he quoted Obama as saying repeatedly: "Israel doesn't know what its own best interests are."

Obama, he wrote, appeared to see Netanyahu as a "political coward" vis-a-vis the peace process with the Palestinians who was completely "captive to the settler lobby," and whose ongoing settlement activity was moving Israel "down a path toward near total isolation."

Senior figures from Netanyahu's ruling rightwing Likud party reacted furiously, accusing the US leader of "gross interference" in the upcoming election, which is widely expected to see Israelis re-elect their hawkish prime minister.

"Over the last four years, we have faced tremendous pressure and we will continue to stand up for the vital interests of Israel and its security," Netanyahu told reporters on a tour of an army base near Gaza, his remarks broadcast on public radio.

Until now, there had been no official response to the article, which on Wednesday dominated the headlines in the newspapers as well as on Israel's main television and radio stations.

"This is gross interference by the US president in the elections in Israel," senior Likud officials told Israel HaYom, while others told The Jerusalem Post he was "taking revenge" for the Israeli leader's overt support for Obama's rival during the presidential race in November.

But Danny Danon, number five on the Likud list, put a positive spin on Obama's "intervention," saying it would chalk up more votes for the premier.

"Any external intervention attempt only brings us more seats," he told Yediot Aharonot.

Opposition figures leapt at the chance to attack Netanyahu.

"Anyone who still thinks things will be okay woke up this morning to a very clear and sharp statement by the US president, who says that Israel's prime minister is leading the state of Israel into severe isolation," said ex-foreign minister Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist HaTnuah faction.

In the article, Goldberg wrote that Obama was unsurprised when Israel announced plans to build in E1, a highly sensitive area of West Bank land near Jerusalem, suggesting it was "what he has come to expect" from Netanyahu's "self-defeating policies."

Although the US would not cut off its aid to Israel, Obama was not likely to "waste his time on Mideast peace" and the Jewish state could soon notice a "significant shift" on the diplomatic front, he wrote.

"It is in terms of American diplomatic protection -- among the Europeans and especially at the UN -- that Israel may one day soon notice a significant shift," he said, suggesting the US may fail to whip up votes against perceived anti-Israel resolutions, and could even itself abstain.

In an editorial, the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the piece provided serious food for thought for voters just six days before the election.

These statements "are food for thought, served up to Israeli citizens before they retreat into their shell of apathy and elect a right-wing government comprised of Likud, (the secular nationalist) Yisrael Beitenu, (the hardline religious) Jewish Home and the ultra-Orthodox parties, which will lead the country into a confrontation with Obama and the rest of the world."

- AFP/jc

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How to clip your fingernails in space without inhaling them

Astronaut Chris Hadfield demonstrates safe clipping in space.

(Credit:
Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is known for playing his guitar in zero gravity on the International Space Station. To keep his fingers in playing shape, he has to keep his nails clipped. Down here on Earth, that's no problem -- you just grab some clippers and go at it. In space, it's a little more complicated.

Hadfield demonstrates his trimming method in a video released by the Canadian Space Agency. The first step is to procure a nail clipper. This is just like our Earth nail clippers, except it has Velcro on it to keep it from floating around and bumping into astronauts or machinery.

It would be tempting to just start clipping away, but flying nail bits can be hazardous in space. The last thing you want is an accidental inhalation or getting one stuck in your eye. These are the sort of things astronauts have to worry about.

The secret to corralling those clippings is to find a duct where air is pulled in. Cut your nails right above it and all those little pieces get sucked down to the vent. They just sit there against the mesh filter until someone comes along to vacuum them up later. Mission accomplished!

(Via Neatorama)

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Americans among hostages taken in Algeria attack

Updated at 1:49 p.m. ET

ALGIERS, Algeria Islamist militants attacked and occupied a natural gas field partly operated by BP in southern Algeria early Wednesday, killing two people and holding an unknown number of foreigners, including Americans, hostage while surrounded by Algerian forces.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Americans were among the hostages but wouldn't say how many.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has discussed the attack with Algeria's prime minister, and the United States is working with Algerian authorities, CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan reports.

A militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for Algeria's support of France's operation against al Qaeda-linked Malian rebels groups far to the southeast. It said it was holding 41 foreigners, including seven Americans, but the United States hasn't confirmed those figures.

Algerian forces have surrounded the complex and the state news agency reported a bit more than 20 people we're being held, including Americans, Britons, Norwegians, French and Japanese, citing the local authorities.

"Algeria will not respond to terrorist demands and rejects all negotiations," announced Algeria's top security official, Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia on television.

In a statement BP said the site was "attacked and occupied by a group of unidentified armed people," and some of its personnel are believed to be "held by the occupiers."

Ireland announced that a 36-year-old married Irish man was among them, while Japan and Britain said their citizens were involved as well. A Norwegian woman said her husband called her saying he had been taken hostage.

In addition to the two foreigners killed — one of them a Briton — six were wounded in the attack, including two foreigners, two police officers and two security agents, Algeria's state news agency reported.

Hundreds of Algerians work at the plant and were taken in the attack, but the state news agency reported that they have gradually been released in small groups, unharmed by the late afternoon.

A group called the Katibat Moulathamine, or the Masked Brigade, called a Mauritanian news outlet to say one of its affiliates had carried out the operation on the Ain Amenas gas field, taking 41 hostages from nine or 10 different nationalities.

The group's claim could not be independently substantiated and there would be fewer than 20 foreign staff members on site on a typical day, along with hundreds of Algerian employees.

The caller to the Nouakchott Information Agency, which often carries announcements from extremist groups, did not give any further details, except to say that the kidnapping was carried out by "Those Who Signed in Blood," a group created to attack the countries participating in the offensive against Islamist groups in Mali.

He said the operation was to punish Algeria for allowing French jets attacking rebel groups in Mali to use its airspace.

French President Francois Hollande launched the surprise operation in its former West African colony on Friday, with hopes of stopping al Qaeda-linked and other Islamist extremists he believes pose a danger to the world.

Wednesday's attack began with the ambush of a bus carrying employees from the gas plant to the nearby airport but the attackers were driven off, according to the Algerian government, which said three vehicles of heavily armed men were involved.

"After their failed attempt, the terrorist group headed to the complex's living quarters and took a number of workers with foreign nationalities hostage," said the statement.

Attacks on oil-rich Algeria's hydrocarbon facilities are very rare, despite decades of fighting an Islamist insurgency, mostly in the north of the country.

In the last several years, however, al Qaeda's influence in the poorly patrolled desert wastes of southern Algeria and northern Mali and Niger has grown and it operates smuggling and kidnapping networks throughout the area. Militant groups that seized control of northern Mali already hold seven French hostages as well as four Algerian diplomats.

The natural gas field where the attack occurred, however, is more than 600 miles from the Mali border, though it is just 60 miles from Libya's deserts.

BP, together with Norwegian company Statoil and the Algerian state oil company, Sonatrach, operate the gas field. A Japanese company, JGC Corp, provides services for the facility as well.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the kidnapped foreigners possibly include Japanese employees of JGC.

"We are certain that JGC is the one affected," Suga said, adding that the government is now negotiating with local officials through diplomatic channels, asking to protect the lives of the Japanese nationals.

Statoil said that it has 20 employees in the facility. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm that any Norwegian citizens had been abducted. The Norwegian Newspaper Bergens Tidende, however, said a 55-year-old Norwegian working on the site called his wife to say he had been abducted.

Algeria had long warned against military intervention against the rebels in northern Mali, fearing the violence could spill over its own long and porous border. Though its position softened slightly after Hollande visited Algiers in December, Algerian authorities remain skeptical about the operation and worried about its consequences on the region.

Algeria is Africa's biggest country, and has been an ally of the U.S. and France in fighting terrorism for years. But its relationship with France has been fraught with lingering resentment over colonialism and the bloody war for independence that left Algeria a free country 50 years ago.

Algeria's strong security forces have struggled for years against Islamist extremists, and have in recent years managed to nearly snuff out violence by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb around its home base in northern Algeria. In the meantime, AQIM moved its focus southward.

AQIM has made tens of millions of dollars off kidnapping in the region, abducting Algerian businessmen or political figures, and sometimes foreigners, for ransom.

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Obama Unveils Sweeping Plan to Curb Gun Violence

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maqndel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Andrew Cuomo Signs New York Gun Control Law, Obama Readies Federal Plan Watch Video

'The View' on NRA Shooting App: Think It Out Watch Video

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

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

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

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

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

"To make a real and lasting difference, Congress must act," Obama said. "And Congress must act soon."

Officials said some of the legislative measures Obama outlined could be introduced on Capitol Hill next week. The pricetag for Obama's entire package is $500 million, the White House said.

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

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

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

Obama has questioned the value of placing more armed guards at schools around the country, although his proposal does call for placement of more police officers at public schools. The NRA opposes most of the other gun restrictions Obama has proposed.

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France to stay in Mali until stability restored

BAMAKO/DUBAI (Reuters) - France will end its intervention in Mali only once stability has returned to the West African country, French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday, raising the prospects of a costly, drawn-out operation against al Qaeda-linked rebels.

Paris has poured hundreds of soldiers into Mali and carried out air raids since Friday in the northern half of the country, which Western and regional states fear could become a base for attacks by Islamist militants in Africa and Europe.

Thousands of African troops are due to take over the offensive but regional armies are scrambling to accelerate the operation - initially not expected for months and brought forward by France's bombing campaign aimed at stopping a rebel advance on a strategic town last week.

"We have one goal. To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory," Hollande told a news conference during a visit to the United Arab Emirates.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, accompanying Hollande, said the offensive against the Malian rebels could take some time, and the current French level of involvement could last weeks. Elections, however, would take months to organize.

French aircraft earlier hit rebels with fresh air strikes and a column of dozens of French armored vehicles rumbled into the dusty riverside capital of Bamako overnight, bringing to about 750 the number of French troops in Mali.

Paris has said it plans to deploy 2,500 soldiers in its former colony to bolster the Malian army and work with the intervention force provided by West African states.

West African defense chiefs met in Bamako on Tuesday to approve plans for speeding up the deployment of 3,300 regional troops, foreseen in a United Nations-backed intervention plan to be led by Africans.

Nigeria pledged to deploy soldiers within 24 hours and Belgium said it was sending transport planes and helicopters to help, but West Africa's armies need time to become operational.

Mali's north, a vast and inhospitable area of desert and rugged mountains the size of Texas, was seized last year by an Islamist alliance combining al Qaeda's north African wing AQIM with splinter group MUJWA and the home-grown Ansar Dine rebels.

Any delay in following up on the French air bombardments of Islamist bases and fuel depots with a ground offensive could allow the insurgents to slip away into the desert and mountains, regroup and counter-attack.

The rebels, who French officials say are mobile and well-armed, have shown they can hit back, dislodging government forces from Diabaly, 350 km (220 miles) from Bamako on Monday.

Residents said the town was still under Islamist control on Tuesday despite a number of air strikes that shook houses.

An eye witness near Segou, to the south, told Reuters he had seen 20 French Special Forces soldiers driving toward Diabaly.

Malians have largely welcomed the French intervention, having seen their army suffer a series of defeats by the rebels.

"With the arrival of the French, we have started to see the situation on the front evolve in our favor," said Aba Sanare, a resident of Bamako.

QUESTIONS OVER READINESS

Aboudou Toure Cheaka, a senior regional official in Bamako, said the West African troops would be on the ground in a week.

The original timetable for the 3,300-strong U.N.-sanctioned African force - to be backed by western logistics, money and intelligence services - did not initially foresee full deployment before September due to logistical constraints.

Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Guinea have all offered troops. Col. Mohammed Yerima, spokesman for Nigeria's defense ministry, said the first 190 soldiers would be dispatched within 24 hours.

But Nigeria, which is due to lead the mission, has already cautioned that even if some troops arrive in Mali soon, their training and equipping will take more time.

Sub-Saharan Africa's top oil producer, which already has peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur and is fighting a bloody and difficult insurgency at home against Islamist sect Boko Haram, could struggle to deliver on its troop commitment of 900 men.

One senior government adviser in Nigeria said the Mali deployment was stretching the country's military.

"The whole thing's a mess. We don't have any troops with experience of those extreme conditions, even of how to keep all that sand from ruining your equipment. And we're facing battle-hardened guys who live in those dunes," the adviser said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

FRENCH LINING UP SUPPORT

France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as the policeman of its former African colonies, said on Monday that the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Germany had also offered logistical support.

Fabius has said Gulf Arab states would help the Mali campaign while Belgium said on Tuesday it would send two C130 transport planes and two medical helicopters to Mali following a request from Paris.

A meeting of donors for the operation was expected to be held in Addis Ababa at the end of January.

Security experts have warned that the multinational intervention in Mali, couched in terms of a campaign by governments against "terrorism", could provoke a jihadist backlash against France and the West, and African allies.

U.S. officials have warned of links between AQIM, Boko Haram in Nigeria and al Shabaab Islamic militants fighting in Somalia.

Al Shabaab, which foiled a French effort at the weekend to rescue a French secret agent it was holding hostage, urged Muslims around the world to rise up against what it called "Christian" attacks against Islam.

"Our brothers in Mali, show patience and tolerance and you will win. War planes never liberate a land," Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab's spokesman, said on a rebel-run website.

U.S. officials said Washington was sharing information with French forces in Mali and considering providing logistics, surveillance and airlift capability.

"We have made a commitment that al Qaeda is not going to find any place to hide," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters as he began a visit to Europe. Panetta later said the U.S. had no plans to send troops to Mali.

"I don't know what the French endgame is for this. What is their goal? It reminds me of our initial move into Afghanistan," a U.S. military source told Reuters.

"Air strikes are fine. But pretty soon you run out of easy targets. Then what do you do? What do you do when they head up into the mountains?"

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi; Felix Onuah in Abuja and Tim Cocks in Lagos; Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu; Michelle Nichols Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Richard Valdmanis in Dakar; Joe Bavier in Abidjan; Jan Vermeylen in Brussels; Writing by Pascal Fletcher and David Lewis; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Giles Elgood)

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