Group Finds More Fake Ingredients in Popular Foods

It's what we expect as shoppers—what's in the food will be displayed on the label.

But a new scientific examination by the non-profit food fraud detectives the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), discovered rising numbers of fake ingredients in products from olive oil to spices to fruit juice.

"Food products are not always what they purport to be," Markus Lipp, senior director for Food Standards for the independent lab in Maryland, told ABC News.

In a new database to be released Wednesday, and obtained exclusively by ABC News today, USP warns consumers, the FDA and manufacturers that the amount of food fraud they found is up by 60 percent this year.

USP, a scientific nonprofit that according to their website "sets standards for the identity, strength, quality, and purity of medicines, food ingredients, and dietary supplements manufactured, distributed and consumed worldwide" first released the Food Fraud Database in April 2012.

The organization examined more than 1,300 published studies and media reports from 1980-2010. The update to the database includes nearly 800 new records, nearly all published in 2011 and 2012.

Among the most popular targets for unscrupulous food suppliers? Pomegranate juice, which is often diluted with grape or pear juice.

"Pomegranate juice is a high-value ingredient and a high-priced ingredient, and adulteration appears to be widespread," Lipp said. "It can be adulterated with other food juices…additional sugar, or just water and sugar."

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Lipp added that there have also been reports of completely "synthetic pomegranate juice" that didn't contain any traces of the real juice.

USP tells ABC News that liquids and ground foods in general are the easiest to tamper with:

• Olive oil: often diluted with cheaper oils


• Lemon juice: cheapened with water and sugar


• Tea: diluted with fillers like lawn grass or fern leaves


• Spices: like paprika or saffron adulterated with dangerous food colorings that mimic the colors

Milk, honey, coffee and syrup are also listed by the USP as being highly adulterated products.

Also high on the list: seafood. The number one fake being escolar, an oily fish that can cause stomach problems, being mislabeled as white tuna or albacore, frequently found on sushi menus.

National Consumers League did its own testing on lemon juice just this past year and found four different products labeled 100 percent lemon juice were far from pure.

"One had 10 percent lemon juice, it said it had 100 percent, another had 15 percent lemon juice, another...had 25 percent, and the last one had 35 percent lemon juice," Sally Greenberg, Executive Director for the National Consumers League said. "And they were all labeled 100 percent lemon juice."

Greenberg explains there are indications to help consumers pick the faux from the food.

"In a bottle of olive oil if there's a dark bottle, does it have the date that it was harvested?" she said. While other products, such as honey or lemon juice, are more difficult to discern, if the price is "too good to be true" it probably is.

"$5.50, that's pretty cheap for extra virgin olive oil," Greenberg said. "And something that should raise some eyebrows for consumers."

Many of the products USP found to be adulterated are those that would be more expensive or research intensive in its production.
"Pomegranate juice is expensive because there is little juice in a pomegranate," Lipp said.

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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 Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

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

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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.

Western governments whose citizens died nevertheless 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," 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 one-eyed veteran guerrilla who fought in Afghanistan in 1980s and in Algeria's civil war in the 1990s.

Belmokhtar's fighters launched their attack on the In Amenas gas plant before dawn on Wednesday, just five days after French warplanes 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 in so short a time, although the French campaign could have been one trigger for fighters to launch an assault they had already prepared.

"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' plans to storm the complex. However, Britain and France both defended the Algerian action in public.

"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."

OIL VULNERABILITIES EXPOSED

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

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.

Algeria's Interior Ministry had reported on Saturday that 23 hostages and 32 militants were killed during the assaults launched by Algerian special forces to end the crisis, with 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages freed.

Minister of Communication Mohamed Said said the toll would rise when final numbers were issued in the next few hours: "I am afraid unfortunately to say that the death toll will go up," Said was quoted as saying by the official APS news agency.

Private Algerian television station Ennahar said on Sunday that 25 bodies had been discovered at the Tiguentourine plant, adding that the operation to clear the base would last 48 hours.

The bodies were believed to belong to hostages executed by the militants, said Ennahar TV, which is known to have good sources within Algerian security.

With so much still unknown about the fates of foreigners held at the sites, countries that have faced casualties have yet to issue full counts of the dead. The plant was run jointly by Britain's BP and Norway's Statoil with the Algerian state oil company. A Japanese engineering firm and a French catering company also operated there.

In London, Cameron said three British nationals were confirmed killed and another three plus a British resident were also believed to be dead. One American has been confirmed killed. Statoil says five Norwegians are missing. Japanese and French citizens are also among those missing or presumed dead.

MULTINATIONAL HOSTAGE-TAKERS

Said reported that the militants had six different nationalities and the operation to clear the plant of mines laid by the hostage-takers was still under way.

Believed to be among the 32 dead militants was their leader, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a Nigerien close to Belmokhtar.

Mauritanian news agencies identified the field commander of the group that attacked the plant as Nigeri, a fighter from one of the Arab tribes in Niger who had joined the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in early-2005.

That group eventually joined up with al Qaeda to become Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It and allied groups are the targets of the French military operation in Mali.

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 country's outwardly tough 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.

(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; Editing by Peter Graff)

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No more measures for Greece if reforms carried out: Lagarde

ATHENS: No additional measures would be necessary for Greece if it carries out the reforms under its bailout programme, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said in an interview with the Sunday edition of Kathimerini.

"But if the structural reforms are not carried out... then more cuts would be necessary," the head of the International Monetary Fund told the Greek newspaper.

Entering a sixth year straight of recession, the heavily indebted country is relying on EU-IMF bailout packages.

It also received a private-sector debt cut early last year. Since 2010, the EU and IMF have committed 240 billion euros ($320 billion) in rescue loans to Greece, while last week the IMF unblocked a frozen tranche of 3.2 billion euros from its pending aid package.

"Greece holds its future in its own hands... It is up to the country itself to succeed in its programme," Lagarde said.

The IMF chief said she had a very good working relationship with both the Greek prime minister and finance minister.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and I "have a very good and honest relationship," she said, adding that the premier has even "surprised" her with his stance following his election.

Lagarde also said she believed the co-existence of three different parties in Greece's coalition government is beneficial.

"Regarding the implementation of the programme and the responsibilities towards the people, a wide coalition is much more important than a tight majority," she said.

Conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's coalition government has lost 16 deputies since coming to power in June, as a result of opposition to continued austerity.

It now counts a majority of 163 seats out of an overall 300.

On Friday, the IMF's mission chief for Greece Poul Thomsen said the country will still need additional help from its European partners next year.

- AFP/fa

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Lalu backs Shinde's accusation of BJP, RSS

PATNA: RJD president Lalu Prasad today backed Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde's accusation that BJP and RSS were conducting terror training camps and promoting "Hindu terrorism" in the country.

"He (Shinde) is the Union home minister. Will he tell a lie?" Prasad asked while talking to reporters after being unanimously elected the party's president for the eighth time. Appealing to party workers to take a pledge not to allow "communal forces" assume power at the Centre at any cost, he said his party would make sincere efforts to bring all secular forces together. Having four MPs in the Lok Sabha, RJD is supporting UPA government at the Centre from outside. Slamming Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, the RJD chief said his party would not seek dismissal of the NDA rule led by Kumar but would defeat it with the help of masses as people were "disillusioned" with the JD(U)-BJP government.

He reminded the people of the statement of Press Council of India chairman Markanday Katju that the fate of the present dispensation in Bihar was doomed. He asked Kumar to stick to his statement that he would not seek vote in 2015 assembly elections if he failed to improve electric supply situation in the state. Prasad announced that his party, which now has 22 MLAs in the 243-member Assembly, would organize a big rally at Gandhi Maidan here on April 7 to sound the bugle of change in the state politics. All top RJD leaders were present in the convention of the party which adopted resolutions on various issues. The resolution on economy opposed use of agricultural land for non-farming purposes. The party demanded raising the number of subsidised LPG cylinders for a family from nine to 12 a year. It advocated for better education and employment opportunity for the minority community.

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More than 140 nations adopt treaty to cut mercury

GENEVA (AP) — A new and legally binding international treaty to reduce harmful emissions of mercury was adopted Saturday by more than 140 nations, capping four years of difficult negotiations but stopping short of some of the tougher measures that proponents had envisioned.

The new accord aims to cut mercury pollution from mining, utility plants and a host of products and industrial processes, by setting enforceable limits and encouraging shifts to alternatives in which mercury is not used, released or emitted.

Mercury, known to be a poison for centuries, is natural element that cannot be created or destroyed. It is released into the air, water and land from small-scale artisanal gold mining, coal-powered plants, and from discarded electronic or consumer products such as electrical switches, thermostats and dental amalgam fillings. Mercury compound goes into batteries, paints and skin-lightening creams.

Because it concentrates and accumulates in fish and goes up the food chain, mercury poses the greatest risk of nerve damage to pregnant women, women of child-bearing age and young children. The World Health Organization has said there are no safe limits for the consumption of mercury and its compounds, which can also cause brain and kidney damage, memory loss and language impairment.

A decade ago, Switzerland and Norway began pushing for an international treaty to limit mercury emissions, a process that culminated in the adoption of an accord Saturday after an all-night session that capped a weeklong conference in Geneva and previous such sessions over the past four years.

"It will help us to protect human health and the environment all over the world," Swiss environment ambassador Franz Perrez told a news conference.

But the treaty only requires that nations with artisanal and small-scale gold mining operations, one of the biggest sources of mercury releases, draw up national plans within three years of the treaty entering force to reduce and — if possible — eliminate the use of mercury in such operations. Governments also approved exceptions for some uses such as large measuring devices for which there are no mercury-free alternatives; vaccines where mercury is used as a preservative; and products used in religious or traditional activities.

Switzerland, Norway and Japan each contributed $1 million to get the treaty started, but U.N. officials say tens of millions more will be needed each year to help developing countries comply. The money would be distributed through the Global Environment Facility, an international funding mechanism.

The U.N. Environment Program said the treaty will be signed later this year in the southern Japanese city of Minamata, for which it is to be named. After that, 50 nations must ratify it before it comes into force, which officials predicted would happen in three to four years.

So-called Minimata disease, a severe neurological disorder caused by mercury poisoning, was discovered in the late 1950s because of methylmercury escaping from the city's industrial wastewater. The illness, which sickened people who ate contaminated fish, killed hundreds and left many more badly crippled. Some 12,000 people have demanded compensation from Japan's government.

"To agree on global targets is not easy to do," Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, told reporters. "There was no delegation here that wished to leave Geneva without drafting a treaty."

Over the past 100 years, mercury found in the top 100 meters (yards) of the world's oceans has doubled, and concentrations in waters deeper than that have gone up by 25 percent, the U.N. environment agency says, while rivers and lakes contain an estimated 260 metric tons of mercury that was previously held in soils.

The treaty was originally blocked by powers such as the United States, but President Barack Obama's reversal of the U.S. position in early 2009 helped propel momentum for its adoption. China and India also played key roles in ensuring its passage; Asia accounts for just under half of all global releases of mercury.

"We have closed a chapter on a journey that has taken four years of often intense, but ultimately successful, negotiations and opened a new chapter toward a sustainable future," said Fernando Lugris, the Uruguayan diplomat who chaired the negotiations.

Some supporters of a new mercury treaty said they were not satisfied with the agreement.

Joe DiGangi, a science adviser with advocacy group IPEN, said that while the treaty is "a first step," it is not tough enough to achieve its aim of reducing overall emissions. For example, he said, there is no requirement that each country create a national plan for how it will reduce mercury emissions.

His group and some of the residents of Minamata have opposed naming the treaty for their city because they feel it does not do enough to fix the problem.

"This treaty should be called the 'Mercury Convention,' not the 'Minamata Convention," said Takeshi Yasuma, a Japanese activist. "Water pollution resulting in contaminated sediment and fish caused the Minamata tragedy, but the treaty contains no obligations to reduce mercury releases to water and no obligations to clean up contaminated sites."

Treaty proponents called it a good first step, however, and Steiner said the document would evolve over time and hopefully become a stronger instrument.

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Obama to Be Sworn in for 2nd Term at White House

Jan 20, 2013 8:43am

While an estimated 800,000 people are expected to gather in Washington D.C.  Monday to watch President Obama be sworn in for a second term, his second term officially begins Sunday. He will take his oath of office in a private ceremony. Vice President Joe Biden was sworn in on Sunday morning at the Naval Observatory.

OBAMA SWEARING-IN:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. administers the oath of office a second time to President Barack Obama in the Map Room of the White House on Jan. 21, 2009. (Pete Souz / WH Photo / Getty Images)

–Obama will take the oath of office for a second term in a small ceremony in the Blue Room of the White House at 11:55 am. Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath.

–Obama will be sworn in using a Bible today that belonged to First Lady Michelle Obama’s grandmother, LaVaughn Delores Robinson. The Robinson family Bible was a present from the first lady’s father to his mother on Mother’s Day in 1958, six years before Michelle’s birth.

–Due to constitutionally-mandated scheduling, President Obama is set to become the second president in U.S. history to have four swearing-in ceremonies. Today will be his third. Obama was sworn in twice in 2008 out of an abundance of caution after Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed the oath of office.

Here is video of Obama’s first swearing in by Roberts:

And Here is audio of Roberts administering the oath for a second time in 2009:

–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.

PHOTOS: U.S. Presidents Taking the Oath of Office

BIDEN SWEARING-IN:

Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

–Vice President Biden was sworn-in at the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory, surrounded by his family and close friends.

–Biden personally selected Associate Justice Sotomayor, who will be the first Hispanic and fourth female judge to administer an oath of office.

–Three women have previously sworn-in presidents and vice presidents: Judge Sarah T. Hughes swore-in President Johnson in 1963; Justice Sandra Day O’Connor swore-in Vice President Dan Quayle in 1989; and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg swore-in Vice President Al Gore in 1997.

–On Sunday and Monday, Vice President Biden will be sworn in using the Biden Family Bible, which is five inches thick, has a Celtic cross on the cover and has been in the Biden family since 1893. He used it every time he was sworn in as a US Senator and when he was sworn in as Vice President in 2009. His son Beau used it when he was sworn in as Delaware’s attorney general.

Tune in to the ABC News.com Live page on Monday morning starting at 9:30 a.m. EST for all-day live streaming video coverage of Inauguration 2013: Barack Obama. Live coverage will also be available on the ABC News iPad App and mobile devices.

SHOWS: This Week World News

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Algerian army stages "final assault" on gas plant

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - The Algerian army on Saturday carried out a final assault on al Qaeda-linked gunmen holed up in a desert gas plant, killing 11 of the Islamists after they took the lives of seven more foreign hostages, a local source and the state news agency said.

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

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.

The exact death toll among the gunmen and the foreign and Algerian workers at the plant near the town of In Amenas close to the Libyan border remained unclear.

Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 burned bodies at the plant. Efforts were under way to identify the bodies, the source told Reuters, and it was not clear how they had died.

Sixteen foreign hostages were freed on Saturday, a source close to the crisis said. They included two Americans, two Germans and one Portuguese. Britain said fewer than 10 of its nationals at the plant were unaccounted for.

The attack on the plant swiftly turned into one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades, pushing Saharan militancy to the top of the global agenda.

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS

It 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 was a response to the French offensive. 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.

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

France's defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, declined to criticize the Algerian response to the crisis, however.

"The Algerian authorities are on their own soil and responding in the fashion they can. The overriding mission is to tackle the terrorists," he told France 3 television.

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

VETERAN JIHADIST

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.

France says the incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary.

The field commander of the Islamist group that attacked the plant is a veteran fighter from Niger called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, Mauritanian news agencies reported.

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 a 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.

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 in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Mark Trevelyan)

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SNCF to launch grant framework for social entrepreneurs

SINGAPORE: To facilitate the growth of co-operatives, the Singapore National Co-operative Federation (SNCF) will launch a comprehensive grant framework that gives budding social entrepreneurs the support they need to set up new co-operatives to deal with social needs that have yet to be met.

Existing co-operatives will also be able to use the grant to improve productivity, expand their services, and for staff development.

This was announced by SNCF Chairman Chan Tee Seng at an awards ceremony on Saturday to recognise 22 co-operatives, co-operators and supporters for their contributions toward improving the welfare of Singaporeans.

The awards commend those who have helped grow the Singapore Co-operative Movement, which includes areas such as thrift and loan, aged care, childcare, employment, and insurance.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Lim Swee Say and former Singapore President SR Nathan were also among those recognised as co-op champions for the support they have rendered to the co-operative movement.

Mr Lim praised the role of co-operatives here, calling them both competent and competitive.

"Here at home, our co-operatives and social enterprises are doing your best as active citizens. It's in your DNA to do good -- passion to help others to live a better life. It's in your DNA to do well -- competent and competitive, to be financially viable. How can we help others, if we're not able to help ourselves? Most of all, it's in your DNA to do more, and to do more together," he said.

Mr Lim urged individual co-operatives here to work as a network, and in partnership with other like-minded enterprises so as to meet the ever-increasing needs of the community.

As a way to encourage co-operatives to come together, the SNCF also plans to facilitate and co-pay a shared services platform that will allow these co-operatives to collaborate and develop shared services in the areas of IT, marketing, book-keeping and accounting.

-CNA/ac

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Rahul Gandhi gets bigger role in Congress, appointed party vice-president

JAIPUR: Rahul Gandhi was formally elevated to the number two position in the Congress party on Saturday after being appointed its vice-president, but his role in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls would be decided later.

The anointment of the 42-year-old leader nine years after he entered politics was formalised at the meeting of the party's highest policy making body, the Congress working committee (CWC), which unanimously adopted a resolution for this moved by defence minister AK Antony.

The decision ends prolonged speculation about a bigger role for Rahul, so far one of the 11 general secretaries of the Congress. The speculation focussed on the possibility of his being made working president or secretary general of the party.

It was clear that the party has stopped short of naming Rahul either as its face in the 2014 polls or as its prime ministerial candidate, obviously, giving itself time to see how the political scenario pans out in the run up to the polls.

Janardhan Dwivedi, chief spokesperson of the party, who made the much-awaited announcement, told reporters as to what will be Rahul's role in the next election or whether he will lead the election campaign will be decided later.

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