Over 50% primary students will attend private schools by 2020, reveals survey

NAGPUR: A national survey has revealed that over 50% of students will pay for primary education by the year 2020. NGO Pratham has cited annual rise in private school admissions as a measure for reaching this conclusion. Their Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is one of the country's most respected and valued surveys.

The report states that "we have believed for a long time -and this is the logic of Right To Education (RTE) - that governments will provide for education of a large majority of children. This premise is likely not to be valid 10 years from now". Quoting government data on schools, the report says that 29.8% of students in Std I-V (urban and rural) attended private schools in 2010-11. And surprisingly in just two years after RTE came into effect, ASER says there has been an increase of 5.8 percentage points in private school enrolment.

The report mentions that "the trend is unmistakable. Private school enrolment in rural India is increasing at about 10% every year or about three percentage points per year. In the election year of 2014, about 41% of all of India' primary age children will be in private schools, and by the time 2019 elections come around, private sector will be the clear major formal education provider in India".

ASER says in Maharashtra over 40% of primary level students are enrolled in private schools.

TOI had reported in August last year that 10 lakh students had moved out of government schools and shifted to private institutes, in the last five years. The then director of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) Sanjay Deshmukh, said, "Five years ago, we had about 78 lakh students and now that figure has slipped to 68 lakh. While the students are leaving government schools they are not necessarily moving away from the state board."

At an RTE convention held in the city last year, additional chief secretary in charge of school education, JS Saharia reminded his subordinates working at the ground level that it was time to buckle up. Saharia, said, "Every year 2 lakh students are moving out of our schools. This tells us that something is very wrong and we must act upon it immediately. Visit schools and check discrepancies - use the powers that the state has granted you. We already know the schools which have less that 50% attendance, so go there and take action."

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President Obama Calls for 'Collective Action'

Invoking the nation's founding values, President Obama marked the start of his second term today with a sweeping call for "collective action" to confront the economic and social challenges of America's present and future.

"That is our generation's task, to make these words, these rights, these values -- of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- real for every American," Obama said in an inaugural address delivered from the west front of the U.S. Capitol.

"Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time," he said, giving nod to the yawning partisan divide.

"But it does require us to act in our time."

The call to action, on the eve of what's shaping up to be another contentious term with Republicans and Congress, aimed to reset the tone of debate in Washington and turn the page on the political battles of the past.

"For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate," Obama said. "We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect."

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

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The address, lasting a little less than 20 minutes, laid out in broad terms Obama's vision for the next four years, alluding to looming policy debates on the war in Afghanistan, deficit reduction, immigration, and overhaul of Social Security and Medicare.

Obama also became the first president, at least in recent inaugural history, to make explicit mention of equality for gay and lesbian Americans. He made repeated mentions of "climate change," something no president has said from such a platform before.

The president stuck closely to his campaign themes, offering few new details of his policy proposals, however. Those are expected to come next month in the State of the Union address Feb. 12.

"A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America's possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention," Obama said, sounding optimistic tones.

"We are made for this moment, and we will seize it," he said, "so long as we seize it together."

Hundreds of thousands packed the National Mall in chilly 40-degree temperatures and brisk wind to hear Obama's remarks and witness the ceremonial swearing-in. While the crowds were smaller than four years ago, the U.S. Park Police said the Mall reached capacity and was closed shortly before Obama took the podium.

Shortly before the address, Obama placed his left hand on the stacked personal Bibles belonging to President Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and raised his right to repeat the oath administered by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

"I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States," he said, "and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Obama and Biden were both officially sworn in during private ceremonies Sunday, Jan. 20, the date mandated by the Constitution for presidents to begin their terms.

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Veteran jihadist claims bloody Algeria siege for al Qaeda

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - A veteran Islamist fighter claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda for the Algerian hostage crisis, a regional website reported on Sunday, tying the bloody desert siege to France's intervention across the Sahara in Mali.

Algeria said it expected to raise its preliminary death tolls of 23 hostages and 32 militants killed in the four-day siege at a gas plant deep in the Sahara. It said on Sunday it had captured five militants alive.

Western governments whose citizens died or are missing have held back from criticizing tactics used by their ally in the struggle with Islamists across the vast desert.

"We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation," one-eyed guerrilla Mokhtar Belmokhtar said in a video, according to the Sahara Media website, which quoted from the recording but did not immediately show it.

"We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali's Muslims," said Belmokhtar, a veteran of two decades of war in Afghanistan and the Sahara.

Belmokhtar's fighters launched their attack on the In Amenas gas plant before dawn on Wednesday, just five days after French warplanes unexpectedly began strikes to halt advances by Islamists in neighboring northern Mali.

European and U.S. officials say the raid was almost certainly too elaborate to have been planned since the start of the French campaign, although the military action by Paris could have provided a trigger for an assault prepared in advance.

"We had around 40 jihadists, most of them from Muslim countries and some even from the West," Sahara Media quoted Belmokhtar as saying. Algerian officials say Belmokhtar's group was behind the attack but he was not present himself.

Some Western governments have expressed frustration at not being informed in advance of the Algerian authorities' decision to storm the complex on Thursday.

Survivors have said many hostages were killed when Algerian government forces blasted a convoy of trucks on Thursday morning. Algerian officials said they stormed the compound because the militants were trying to escape with their captives.

Britain and France both defended the Algerian action.

"It's easy to say that this or that should have been done. The Algerian authorities took a decision and the toll is very high but I am a bit bothered ... when the impression is given that the Algerians are open to question. They had to deal with terrorists," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a televised statement: "Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack.

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

With so much still unknown about the fates of foreigners held at the site, some countries that have faced casualties have yet to issue full counts of their dead.

Scores of foreigners lived alongside the hundreds of Algerians at the plant, which was run by Britain's BP and Norway's Statoil and also housed workers from a Japanese engineering firm and a French catering company.

Cameron said three British nationals were confirmed killed and another three plus a British resident were also feared dead. One American has been confirmed killed. Statoil said it was searching for five missing Norwegians. Japanese and French citizens are also among those missing or presumed dead.

Algeria's Interior Ministry, which gave the figure on Saturday of 23 hostages killed, said 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerians had been freed.

"I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up," Minister of Communication Mohamed Said was quoted as saying on Sunday by the official APS news agency. Private Algerian television station Ennahar said on Sunday 25 bodies had been discovered. Clearing the base would take 48 hours, it said.

Survivors have given harrowing accounts. Alan Wright, now safe at home in Scotland, told Sky News he had escaped with a group of Algerian and foreign workers who hid for a day and a night and then cut their way through a fence to run to freedom.

While hiding inside the compound the first night, he managed briefly to call his wife who was at home with their two daughters desperately waiting for news.

"She asked if I wanted to speak to Imogen and Esme, and I couldn't because I thought, I don't want my last ever words to be in a crackly satellite phone, telling a lie, saying you're OK when you're far from OK," he recalled.

Algeria's oil minister, Youcef Yousfi, visited the site and said the physical damage was minor, state news service APS reported. The plant, which produces 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas, would start back up in two days, he said.

OIL VULNERABILITIES EXPOSED

The Islamists' assault has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world and exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara.

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

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

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

French troops in Mali advanced slowly on Sunday towards the town of Diably, a militant stronghold the fighters abandoned on Saturday after punishing French attacks.

According to Communications Minister Said, the militants were of six different nationalities. Believed to be among the dead was their leader, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a fighter from Niger who is seen as close to Belmokhtar.

The apparent ease with which guerrillas swooped in from the desert to take control of an important energy facility has raised questions over the country's outwardly tough security measures. Yousfi said Algeria would not allow foreign security firms to guard its oil facilities.

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

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

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

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

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French launches "total reconquest" of Mali's north

BAMAKO: French troops on Sunday consolidated gains in Mali's Islamist-held north as Paris said the aim was its "total reconquest" and Russia, Canada and Germany offered vital aid for the offensive.

The French advance towards the jihadist strongholds came amid reports that the Al-Qaeda linked militants were abandoning some of their positions and converging on the mountainous region of Kidal, their northernmost bastion, 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) from Bamako and near the border with Algeria.

Kidal was the first town seized by an amalgam of Islamist militants and Tuareg separatist groups in March last year. The two sides then had a falling out and the Islamists have since gained the upper hand in the vast desert north.

"The goal is the total reconquest of Mali. We will not leave any pockets" of resistance, French Defence Minister Le Drian said on France 5 television.

Le Drian said seven French citizens taken hostage by Islamist militants in Niger and Mali in recent years were alive, adding there had been "contacts with the hostage-takers".

There had been fears over their fate since the start of the French military intervention in Mali, which sparked a brazen hostage attack in neighbouring Algeria that rocked the world.

The 72-hour stand-off ended in scores of deaths.

Fifty Senegalese soldiers arrived in the Mali capital Bamako, taking the number of African troops there to 150. The planned force will comprise 5,800 soldiers, but deployment has been slow, hampered by cash and logistical constraints.

And a radical Islamist group Ansaru on Sunday claimed responsibility for an attack in central Nigeria that killed two soldiers who were due to be deployed to Mali, injuring five others.

The regional powerhouse last week boosted its troop commitment for Mali to 1,200 soldiers from 900 planned earlier.

In a statement in poor English, Ansaru said: "We have successfully execute our first attempt in (crippling) the Nigerian army troops (whose aim was) to demolish the Islamic empire of Mali."

French troops on the ground meanwhile said they were buttressing their positions.

"The deployment towards the north... which began 24 hours ago, is on course with troops inside the towns of Niono and Sevare," Lieutenant Colonel Emmanuel Dosseur told reporters, referring to key frontline outposts.

Niono is about 350 kilometres northeast of the Malian capital and 60 kilometres south of Diabaly, which was seized nearly a week ago by Islamists and then heavily bombed by French planes.

Sevare has a strategically important airport which could help serve as a base for operations further north. It is about 630 kilometres northeast of Bamako.

The town is also near Konna, whose seizure by Islamists on January 10 sparked the French military intervention in the former colony against the forces occupying northern Mali for about nine months.

"We are in a phase of pushing forward," said a French lieutenant-colonel in charge of operations in Niono and the town of Diabaly, whose fate remains unclear.

Defence Minister Le Drian however said that "everything points to a favourable evolution of the situation in Diabaly in the coming hours."

The region where the towns are located is known for housing the most martial and fanatical Islamists.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Russia had offered to help transport troops and supplies to Mali and Canada had extended help to bring African troops to the country.

Asked how African troops would be transported, Fabius said "there is transportation that will be partly by the Africans themselves, partly by the Europeans and partly by the Canadians."

"And the Russians have proposed to provide means of transport for the French, so it's fairly diverse," he said.

The announcement came a day after an emergency west African summit of the ECOWAS regional bloc called on the United Nations "to immediately provide financial and logistical backing for the deployment of MISMA", the African force.

Germany Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle responded to the appeal, saying "the African troops need financial aid" and pledging to do its bit without setting an amount.

-AFP/ac

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Qadri draws mixed reactions from Hyderabad

HYDERABAD: Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri, the cleric who has been creating waves in Pakistan by challenging the government with his 'long march', has a love-hate relation with Hyderabadis with followers who swear by him as a 'reformer' and others who bitterly criticise him for allegedly siding with BJP's Narendra Modi, the Gujarat chief minister.

Qadri last year said Muslims in Gujarat should 'forget the past', but experts here say the cleric is no stranger to controversy. Analysts say that it wasn't just his 'brash' comments on Gujarat which invited the ire of Hyderabadi professionals and scholars but also a video which went viral on Youtube which seemingly showed him speaking to a freshly buried person instructing the deceased to read the kalimah (declaration of faith).

"How can people follow a man who is seen speaking to a corpse six feet under? Hundreds of thousands in Pakistan have rallied behind him which is puzzling," Zaheer Saleem (name changed) a BPO employee said. Noted Islamic scholar Maulana Omar Abidin too echoed similar views.

Significantly, Jamia Nizamia, perhaps the most important seminary from the city extended no invitation to Qadri. According to Mufti Ziauddin Naqshbandi, "We neither welcomed him nor unwelcomed him. He has his own organisation which propagates his ideas."

Wajeeh Ahmed, a software professional working in Hitec City, criticised Qadri for his belief in the existence of Indian companion of Prophet Muhammad by the name Baba Ratan Hindi who lived for 700 years. "On one hand Qadri says he is modern, on the other he speaks regressive beliefs such as this. Qadri loves courting controversies to make himself popular," he said.

But Qadri's popularity in the city has surged after his visits to Hyderabad in 2004 and 2012. Though his first visit was in 1997, last year, Qadri delivered lectures in the city from February 29 to March 4 at various venues, which made him very popular.

Observers pegged his popularity to the hundreds of videos of his lectures on a gamut of topics from etiquette in Islam to science on Youtube and Facebook. Minhaj-ul-Quran (MUQ), the cleric's organisation headquartered in Purani HaveliHaveli in the Old City, is engaged in education, charity and other community welfare activities. MUQ officials pointed out the cleric's family too had a strong Hyderabadi connection.

Syed Habeeb Ahmed Qadri, member of the board of directors of MUQ said "Qadri's father, Dr Fareeduddin Qadri, studied in the Government Nizamia Tibbi College in Charminar for two years before he moved to Lucknow." MUQ runs an English medium high school with 800 students studying there. It also manages five seminaries, three for girls and two for boys, which has over 600 students.

According to MUQ state chairman Syed Hayatullah Qadri, the organisation is slowly expanding its base to other districts of the state.

Nizamuddin Siddiqui, a law student, said: "His modern approach and book Fatwa Against Terrorism and Suicide Bombing has made me gravitate towards him. He is a brilliant orator and is fluent in English."

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael 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."

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

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

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President Obama Sworn In for Second Term

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden today officially embarked on their second term, taking the Constitutionally mandated oath of office in two separate private ceremonies inside their homes.

Shortly before noon in the Blue Room of the White House, Obama raised his right hand, with his left on a family Bible, reciting the oath administrated by Chief Justice John Roberts. He was surrounded by immediate family members, including first lady Michelle Obama and daughters, Malia and Sasha.

"I did it," he said to his daughters after taking the oath.

Biden was sworn in earlier today by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to administer a presidential oath, in a ceremony at his official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory. He was joined by more than 120 guests, including cabinet members, extended family and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.

Because Jan. 20 -- the official date for a new presidential term -- falls on a Sunday this year, organizers delayed by one day the traditional public inauguration ceremony and parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images

Vice President Joe Biden Sworn in for 2nd Term Watch Video

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Obama and Biden will each repeat the oath on Monday on the west front of the Capitol, surrounded by hundreds of dignitaries and members of Congress. An estimated 800,000 people are expected to gather on the National Mall to witness the moment and inaugural parade to follow.

The dual ceremonies in 2013 means Obama will become the second president in U.S. history to take the presidential oath four times. He was sworn in twice in 2008 out of an abundance of caution after Roberts flubbed the oath of office during the public administration. This year Roberts read from a script.

Franklin Roosevelt was also sworn in four times but, unlike Obama, he was elected four times.

This year will mark the seventh time a president has taken the oath on a Sunday and then again on Monday for ceremonial purposes. Reagan last took the oath on a Sunday in 1985.

Both Obama and Biden took the oath using a special family Bible. Obama used a text that belonged to Michelle Obama's grandmother LaVaughn Delores Robinson. Biden placed his hand on a 120-year-old book with a Celtic cross on the cover that has been passed down through Biden clan.

The official inaugural activities today also included moments of prayer and remembrance that marked the solemnity of the day.

Obama and Biden met at Arlington National Cemetery for a brief morning ceremony to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns, honoring military service members who served and sacrificed. The men stood shoulder to shoulder, bowing their heads as a bugler played "Taps."

Biden, who is Catholic, began the day with a private family mass at his residence. The president and first family attended church services at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historically black church and site of two pre-inaugural prayer services for former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and their families.

The Obamas and Bidens plan to participate in a church service on Monday morning at St. John's Episcopal, across Lafayette Park from the White House. They will also attend a National Prayer Service on Tuesday at the National Cathedral.

Later on Sunday evening, the newly-inaugurated leaders will attend a candlelight reception at the National Building Museum. The president and vice president are expected to deliver brief remarks to their supporters.

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Algerian army stages "final assault" on gas plant

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - The Algerian army carried out a dramatic final assault to end a siege by Islamic militants at a desert gas plant on Saturday, killing 11 al Qaeda-linked gunmen after they took the lives of seven more foreign hostages, the state news agency said.

The state oil and gas company, Sonatrach, said the militants who attacked the plant on Wednesday and took a large number of hostages had booby-trapped the complex with explosives, which the army was removing.

"It is over now, the assault is over, and the military are inside the plant clearing it of mines," a source familiar with the operation told Reuters.

British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the hostage situation had been "brought to an end" by the Algerian army assault on the militants.

The exact death toll among the gunmen and the foreign and Algerian workers at the plant near the town of In Amenas remained unclear, although a tally of reports from various sources indicated that several dozen people had been killed.

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

Some Western governments expressed frustration at not being informed of the Algerian authorities' plans to storm the complex. Algeria's response to the raid will have been conditioned by the legacy of a civil war against Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives.

HOSTAGES FREED

As the army closed in, 16 foreign hostages were freed, a source close to the crisis said. They included two Americans and one Portuguese. Britain said fewer than 10 of its nationals at the plant were unaccounted for and it was urgently seeking to establish the status of all Britions caught up in the crisis.

The base was home to foreign workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.

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

The crisis at the gas plant marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

The captors said their attack on the Algerian gas plant was a response to the French offensive in Mali. However, some U.S. and European officials say the elaborate raid probably required too much planning to have been organized from scratch in the week since France launched its strikes.

Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified gas compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to the French intervention in neighboring Mali.

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

Before the final assault, different sources had put the number of hostages killed at between 12 and 30, with many foreigners still unaccounted for, among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons and Americans.

The figure of 30 came from an Algerian security source, who said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.

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

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said nobody was going to attack the United States and get away with it.

"We have made a commitment that we're going to go after al Qaeda wherever they are and wherever they try to hide," he said during a visit to London. "We have done that obviously in Afghanistan, Pakistan, we've done it in Somalia, in Yemen and we will do it in North Africa as well."

BURNED BODIES

Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 unidentified burned bodies at the plant, a source told Reuters.

The field commander of the group that attacked the plant is a fighter from Niger called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, according to Mauritanian news agencies. His boss, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria's civil war of the 1990s, appears not to have joined the raid.

Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed irritation that the army assault was ordered without consultation and officials grumbled at the lack of information.

But French President Francois Hollande said the Algerian military's response seemed to have been the best option given that negotiation was not possible.

"When you have people taken hostage in such large number by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages - as they did - Algeria has an approach which to me, as I see it, is the most appropriate because there could be no negotiation," Hollande said.

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 outwardly tough Algerian security measures.

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

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

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

France says the hostage incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary. Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year.

(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Rosalind Russell)

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Obama's inauguration a boon for businesses

WASHINGTON: Tucked behind a tidy souvenir shop storefront on the ground floor of an office building one block from the White House, t-shirts, sweatshirts, buttons and a vast assortment of inauguration paraphernalia is staged for an onslaught of purchasing.

Over the course of the weekend, which culminates on Monday on the grassy, park-like National Mall when US President Barack Obama will be sworn in for a second time, Washington businesses that cater to tourists are girding for a deluge of customers.

"It's just breathtaking in the store during those days," said Andrew Gallagher, general manager at White House Gifts, whose shop is located on the inaugural parade route.

This year's inauguration has shrunk to an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 people from the record-breaking 1.8 million who showed up for Obama's first swearing in four years ago, but that hasn't reduced his expectation for financial gain.

"When you're a store that's 3,500 square feet, there are only so many people you can fit in the store," Gallagher said.

Statistics for how much business the inauguration brings to the city aren't generally tabulated, but Max Farrow, DC Chamber of Commerce director of communications, said that in terms of general tourism, each visit to DC generates about $336 in expenditures.

"We do know that in inauguration years, on average we see about a four percent increase in hotel occupancy than in non-inauguration years" for January, said Alicia Malone, a media relations manager at Destination DC, a nonprofit that manages and markets tourism in the capital.

At the Tabard Inn, a quirky hotel and restaurant in Washington's trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood, general manager Jeremiah Cohen said rooms are sold out for the weekend and the restaurant will be packed, but the establishment's biggest moment comes Monday.

"Imagine, like, everything being dictated by the end of swearing in and thousands of people who are famished," Cohen says.

"The flood gates open and I'd say thousands of people start walking north," heading all the way to his restaurant, a favorite with locals, a mile away.

For Rich Benning, president of production company All Stage and Sound, Inc., the work that will be done over the four-day rush from Friday through Monday creates four times the business he usually sees in January.

The unofficial balls that are clustered near the Mall, with their staging, sound, and lighting needs, are the company's inaugural bread and butter this year.

"Because of this push here, we actually went out and bought more speakers and cable" said Benning. "You can't use it throughout the year, but just because it's all so compressed during this one period of time."

For most, inauguration is a boon, but not for John Rider, who sells burritos from an unassuming cart on the corner of 15th and K Streets, two blocks from the White House.

His main clientele are the people who work in the surrounding multi-floor office buildings, who will be taking a three-day weekend on account of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday.

"If I thought there was a chance I could open up and make good money, I'd be down there," at the Mall, he said, but in his past gigs at large crowds, such as Washington's annual Cherry Blossom Festival, he said throngs passed his cart by.

As a mass of visitors descend on the city and businesses fling their doors open, his is one shop that will be shuttering.

- AFP/de

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Rahul is Congress VP, get set for 2014 showdown with Modi

JAIPUR: Rahul Gandhi has finally taken the big leap. On Saturday, amid high anticipation, the Congress formally anointed him as the party's vice president - in other words, the No. 2, which in light of Sonia Gandhi's indifferent health, means his imminent elevation as No. 1. It also means that Rahul Gandhi has agreed to be the party's candidate for PM in 2014 elections, thus setting the stage - if BJP settles for Narendra Modi as its best bet for the election - for a showdown with the Gujarat strongman.

The decision ends the tense uncertainty in Congress over whether Rahul was agreeable to assume a larger responsibility. The young leader, often viewed as a reluctant inheritor, has taken a long time to step up to the plate which will now relieve Sonia Gandhi of some burden and end Congress's anxiety. Rahul's elevation might also act as an impetus to the saffron legions clamouring for the projection of Narendra Modi as their candidate for the PM's job.

In his acceptance remark, Rahul told members of CWC, some of whom were colleagues of his father Rajiv and grandmother Indira: "I have travelled the country widely in last eight years and I believe we can transform the country." The proposal to make Rahul the party vice president was moved by Defence minister A K Antony on the second day of the party's Chintan Shivir (brainstorming session) here. Antony said this was the wish of Congress workers. Sonia and Rahul indicated their agreement.

The leg-up for the Gandhi scion, as indicated by TOI on January 18, marks another generational change in Congress—the fifth from Nehru-Gandhi family after Jawaharlal, Indira, Rajiv and Sonia. Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said no decision has been taken on giving Rahul the command of the coming Lok Sabha polls. But, for all practical purposes, the baton has changed hands and is likely to hasten the induction of a new AICC team. That Sonia Gandhi has decided to keep herself aloof, at least formally so, may only accelerate the transition.

Rahul had so far resisted the formal No 2 tag to the point of virtually exasperating party leaders and triggering all sorts of speculation. His elevation looked imminent when he was asked, along with three other senior leaders, to look after Congress affairs when Sonia had to go abroad for medical treatment. But the expectations proved wrong, and after the party's debacle in UP last year - an election in which Rahul led the charge - contributed to the uncertainty about Rahul's elevation.

The clamour for drafting in Rahul as the de-jure leader of the Congress reached a crescendo on January 19, eclipsing every discussion on social-economic, political and organisational challenges for which the Chintan Shivir was ostensibly called. The atmospherics of the build-up marked the takeover of the Grand Old Party by its youth brigade.

Sonia Gandhi on Friday had made it clear that youth and urban middle class were party's priorities for 2014: a reflection of the worry that the urban constituencies and the middle classes who were crucial to Congress's back-to- back Lok Sabha wins, particularly the 2009 one, had drifted away. Rahul's remark , expressing his confidence in the country's transformation, appeared to be aimed at the same constituency - aspirational India, currently disillusioned by the non-fulfilment of the promise held out by the UPA.

The new role for Rahul is also likely to be the spur for the BJP to end its ambivalence over what to do with Narendra Modi. Although the BJP leadership has come around to give a second term to Nitin Gadkari, there is recognition in the party that it cannot allow a perception of a Rahul-Gadkari match-up to grow as that is viewed to be to the BJP's disadvantage.

Rahul is only the third vice-president in Congress history after Arjun singh occupied the post under Rajiv Gandhi in 1986, and Jitendra Prasada under Sitaram Kesari in 1997.

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