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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Cliffhanger result in state test run for German election

BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's party was in the lead Sunday after the first state poll in a general election year, initial results showed, but the race for a ruling coalition rested on a knife-edge.

Preliminary results from Lower Saxony on public television showed Merkel's Christian Democrats ahead with around 36 percent and their coalition partners for the last decade, the Free Democrats, with about 10 percent.

The Social Democrats had about 32 percent and their favoured allies the Greens nearly 14 percent, leaving the two sides neck and neck with 46 percent.

The cliffhanger was due to develop throughout the night as results trickle in, determining which coalition will come out on top eight months before a national election that will decide if Merkel wins a third four-year term.

The Christian Democrats (CDU) were down from their 42.5 percent score at the last election in 2008 but appeared to capitalise on the popularity of state premier David McAllister, a half-Scot seen as a potential Merkel successor.

"What a heart-stopping night," McAllister told reporters. "We have every reason to hope that we will be able to continue our successful coalition in Hanover," the state capital.

The big winners of the night, however, were the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), who looked set to tally their best result in Lower Saxony in post-war history.

Polls had indicated they risked slipping below the five-percent hurdle required for seats in the state parliament, but they seemed to get a lift from conservative voters splitting their ballots under Germany's two-vote system in a bid to rescue the coalition.

ARD television said around 101,000 voters who cast ballots for the conservatives in 2008 had plumped for the FDP this time.

If the FDP failed to win representation, its embattled leader Philipp Roesler, who is also Merkel's vice-chancellor and who hails from Lower Saxony, was seen as likely to step down -- possibly as soon as Sunday night.

The outcome seemed to give him a reprieve, if perhaps only brief.

"It is a great day for the FDP in Lower Saxony but it is also a great day for the FDP and liberals in Germany as a whole," a beaming Roesler told reporters in Berlin.

Around 6.2 million people were called to the polls in Lower Saxony, home to European auto giant Volkswagen.

If the centre-right coalition holds on to power, analysts say it will give Merkel, who already enjoys a robust lead in national polls due to her fierce defence of German interests in the eurozone crisis, a strong boost heading into the September election.

But if the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens manage to eke out a victory -- still a distinct possibility -- pundits say it could help shore up the battered campaign of Merkel's gaffe-prone challenger Peer Steinbrueck.

Steinbrueck, a former finance minister from Merkel's 2005-09 "grand coalition" government, was anointed by the SPD as its chancellor candidate late last year.

But he has run into trouble of late with revelations that he made around 1.25 million euros ($1.66 million) over the last three years in speaking fees, and with comments that Merkel owed much of her popularity to her gender.

The SPD's candidate in Lower Saxony, Stephan Weil, hinted that he had been forced to campaign in the face of headwinds out of Berlin.

"The SPD made gains, which is remarkable considering the not exactly easy conditions under which we fought for voters' support in recent weeks," he said.

The website of news weekly Der Spiegel said the stakes remained high for the opposition.

"A victory in Hanover would be a great relief for the Social Democrats," it wrote.

"It would let the party dream of a turnaround at the national level. If it doesn't make it, there's the threat of resignation in the SPD about its chances this autumn."

After Lower Saxony, only the southern state of Bavaria is expected to vote before the September general election.

-AFP/ac

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Muslim groups warn Jaipur Literature Festival against 4 authors

JAIPUR: Muslims groups have warned the organizers of Jaipur Literature Festival against allowing four authors - who read out passages from the banned book 'Satanic Verses' by Salman Rushdie - to participate in this year's Jaipur Lit Fest. The statement was released by a panel of Islamic clerics and scholars during a national conference on "Azmat -E-Namoos -E-Rasool" (Respect and Honour of Prophet Muhammad) held at Ravindra Manch, Jaipur on Sunday in the presence of approximately 20,000 attendees from across the state.

JLF-2013 will take place from January 24 to 28 at Diggi Palace in Jaipur. TOI sought a response from one of the founder directors of JLF, Namita Gokhala on this statement but got no response. Authors - Jeet Thayil, Ruchir Sharma, Amitva Kumar and Hari Kunzru - created a furor last year when they read out passages from the controversial book in public to express their support to Rushdie, whose visit to JLF-2012 had been opposed by the Muslim hardliners.

Interestingly, names of two of the four authors - Jeet Thayil and Ruchir Sharma - are part of the speakers list of JLF-2013 on its website and has irked the Muslim leaders.

Justifying their stand, Sajid Sehrai, an Islamic scholor and organizer of the event said, "These authors have violated Indian law by reading out passages from a banned book. It calls for legal action against them," adding that already half-a-dozen court cases were pending against them under IPC.

The speakers also contended that law should treat everyone as equal. "The hate speech by All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen's MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi was vociferously condemned by us. He was arrested for the same but why does the same law not apply to these writers. Both have hurt the sentiments, but why is one penalized while the others enjoy support from a section on the pretext of 'right to express their views'? Reading most controversial passages of that book has defamed Prophet Mohammad and it is unacceptable," said Mujahid Naqvi of Milli Council.

A series of complaints have been filed in separate courts, including five at Jaipur and one at Ajmer against the authors and organizers. In most of these cases, the court has sought evidence from the petitioners. Muzaffer Bharti, president of Maulana Azad Lok Kalyan Sansthan, who filed a case against them in Ajmer Court said, "We are ready with evidence and will ask the police to arrest them for hurting the sentiments of Muslims." His views were echoed by Naqvi who also had filed a complaint in a Jaipur court.

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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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Ex-Teammate: Armstrong Showed 'Genuine Emotion'

While critics railed against Lance Armstrong for coming off as detached in the two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired Thursday and Friday nights, former teammate and friend, Tyler Hamilton, told "Good Morning America" today that he felt Armstrong was displaying "genuine emotion."

"I've never seen Lance shed a tear until last night. Before I even heard one word from him Thursday night, I could tell he was a broken man," Hamilton said.

Armstrong's contrition turned tearful Friday when he revealed to Oprah Winfrey how difficult it was to betray his family -- particularly his 13 year old son -- who stood up for the fallen cycling star as rumors swirled that he was taking banned drugs.

Armstrong, 41, choked up when he recounted what he told his son, Luke, in the wake of the scandal.

"When this all really started, I saw my son defending me and saying that's not true…" Armstrong told Winfrey, "I told Luke. I said, 'Don't defend me anymore.'"

Armstrong's interview with Winfrey drew millions of viewers.

It was the first time Armstrong admitted using performance-enhancing drugs and oxygen-boosting blood transfusions to help him win the Tour de France.

"I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times," Armstrong said. "I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there. The truth isn't what I said.

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

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"I'm a flawed character, as I well know," Armstrong added. "All the fault and all the blame here falls on me."

However, Hamilton said any hope for Armstrong's redemption would come if he came clean about others who were part of the doping scandal.

"The question now is where he goes from this, his actions moving forward. He needs to name names," Hamilton said.

READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping

Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles in October 2012, after a report by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency found that he and 11 of his teammates orchestrated "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."

Despite the admissions of his teammates that they had doped with Armstrong and seen him complete blood transfusions for races, Armstrong condemned the report and denied that he had ever cheated.

As sponsors including Nike began to pull support of Armstrong following the report, Armstrong's carefully-built image began to crumble. He stepped down from Livestrong, the charity he started to help cancer patients after he survived testicular cancer.

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

In the interview, Armstrong explained his competition "cocktail" of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone that he used throughout his career. He also said he had previously used cortisone.

Armstrong refused to give Winfrey the details of when, where and with whom he doped during seven winning Tours de France between 1999 and 2005, which was the last year he said he doped. Armstrong specifically denied using banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.

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

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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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Football: Barcelona lose first La Liga game of season

MADRID: An injury-time strike from substitute Imanol Agirretxe condemned 10-man Barcelona to a 3-2 defeat at Real Sociedad on Saturday, their first of a record-breaking La Liga season.

Lionel Messi scored in a 10th consecutive game for a landmark second time, putting Barca ahead after six minutes with Pedro Rodriguez doubling lead.

But Chory Castro pulled a goal back before the break and then got his second after 63 minutes.

With Gerard Pique off the field after receiving a red card, Agirretxe got the winner in the 91st minute.

There appears to be no record out of reach for Messi who scored in 10 straight matches in the 2011-12 season, notching up 18 goals in the process.

It equalled the mark set by Ronaldo, who scored 12 in 10 games during the 1996-97 season, and Mariano Martin who put away 18 in 10 matches between 1942 and 1943.

Messi has now hit 15 goals in 10 games and 29 overall in the league this season, but it counted for little on the night.

Barca went into the game having set a new record for a La Liga start with 18 wins -- and just one draw against Real Madrid -- for 55 points from a possible 57.

Despite the loss, they are still 11 points ahead of Atletico Madrid, who play Levante on Sunday, and Real Madrid in third, who face Valencia, a huge 18 points off the pace.

Barca once again began with Andres Iniesta in attack alongside Messi and Pedro Rodriguez with Alexis Sanchez struggling for form and David Villa injured.

Real Sociedad played the more defensive Markel Bergara in midfield rather than Ruben Pardo but even so they were under threat right from the start with a ball over their backline from Iniesta saw Messi scamper clear on goal.

On this occasion, he slotted the ball the wrong side of the post but he was not so forgiving minutes later as he fired Barca ahead.

Iniesta was once again involved as he slipped the ball to Messi on the edge of the area and he picked his spot in the corner past the desperate dive of keeper Claudio Bravo.

A weakened Barca had drawn 2-2 with Malaga at Camp Nou in the first leg of the Spanish Cup quarter-final after they dropped their level after the break but they came out all guns blazing in San Sebastian.

Still Real have a dangerous forward line of their own and they went close to equalising after 10 minutes when Carlos Vela knocked a free-kick to Xabi Prieto, who had been left unmarked in the box, but he hit the side netting.

Real were refusing to sit back and defend and wait for their chances on the counter as so many sides do against Barca but it meant they left themselves open at the back and Pedro hit the post with a 20 yard strike on his weaker right foot.

The Canary Islander did extend Barca's lead midway through the half as he slid in to knock home a Dani Alves cross from close range.

Barca were again denied by the post after Messi had lobbed the ball over the keeper and then Real got back into the game through Castro who fired in a clinical drive from the left of the area after being set up by Vela.

After the break Real managed to ruffle Barca with Pique receiving a second yellow card and then Castro got his second of the night.

Real were pressing forward and an Asier Illarramendi deep cross found Castro whose shot was deflected in off Javier Mascherano.

There was no late rally this time as has so often happened this season from Barca and instead they conceded at the death as Agirretxe scored from close range.

- AFP/de

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Elevation no surprise, no challenge: BJP

NEW DELHI: BJP on Saturday claimed the elevation of Rahul Gandhi to the number two position in Congress poses no challenges to it. The party also said that the move is not going to make any difference as far the prospects of Congress is concerned.

With Congress elevating Rahul Gandhi formaly to the second position in the party by declaring him vice president under party president Sonia Gandhi, BJP's chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said that "if Congress thinks elevation of Rahul Gandhi will give a boost to the party's future prospects, then it is highly mistaken. People will judge Congress as well as Rahul Gandhi by their performance in the last nine years that the party has been in power," Prasad said, reacting to the move.

He maintained "people will look at Rahul Gandhi's track record as an MP and a campaigner of Congress before taking any decision" about him and his party when they have to vote for the Lok Sabha elections, which are a year and half away.

Though this decision is entirely of Congress and is an internal matter of that party, it will not have much political impact, he added.

As the main Opposition party, BJP may have reacted strongly to the Congress move, but the party feels that whoevere is its PM candidate, would have to fight against Rahul Gandhi. While the decision may not have come as a surprise to BJP, the party said that Congress has become synomymous with bad governance and corruption and even Rahul Gandhi cannot change the state of "suffering India" as Prasad pointed out. "I regret to say that Rahul Gandhi is not going to change any of that," Prasad told reporters after the announcement at the Congress Chintan Shivir in Jaipur.

"This announcement of Rahul Gandhi becoming number two of Congress has not come as a surprise. He was already number two after Sonia Gandhi. He was not number three who has been elevated to number two. Only a member of Nehru-Gandhi family can be number two," said another BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain.

"This decision will not bring any gains to Congress. He does not pose a challenge to BJP even if he becomes president of Congress. Congress has no future," Hussain claimed.

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Lilly drug chosen for Alzheimer's prevention study

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Online:

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

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

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

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Manti Te'o Hoax Incredibly Detailed and Complex

Fresh details have emerged about how complex and layered was the hoax involving Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te'o and his fake girlfriend, "Lennay Kekua."

According to ABC News interviews and published reports, Te'o received phone calls, text messages and letters before every football game from his "girlfriend." He was in contact with her family, including a twin brother, a second brother, sister and parents. He called often to check in with them, just as he did with his own family. And "Kekua" kept in contact with Te'o's friends and family, and teammates spoke to her on the phone.

"There are a remarkable number of characters involved. We don't know how many people they represent," Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said at a news conference this week. "There are male and female characters, brothers, cousins, mother, and we don't know if it's two people playing multiple characters or multiple people."

"It goes to the sophistication of this, that there are all these sort of independent pieces that reinforce elements of the story all the way through," he said.

Click here for a who's who in the Manti Te'o case

One of Te'o's teammates who asked not to be identified told ABC News that it was normal for Te'o to pass his phone around to teammates when he was on the line with "Lennay" so they could say hello to her.

"I talked to her," this teammate said. "I wasn't suspicious."

When Te'o got the call telling him that Lennay had died last fall, he was in the locker room, the teammate said.

"He got real emotional, crying," the teammate said. "He's an emotional guy."

The teammate said he thinks Te'o genuinely got hoaxed. The fact that Te'o talked about meeting her and touching her hand - when really he only "met" her on the internet - makes this teammate think that he was not completely telling the truth about his relationship.

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"I think he was just embarrassed about it, the whole internet thing," the teammate said. The player said he hasn't talked to Te'o since this story broke.

With so many questions swirling around the revelation that Te'o's fake girlfriend, a source in the Notre Dame athletic department said the school would like Te'o to speak out publicly, but noted that they are not currently in touch with him.

"At some point the ball ends up in his court," the source said. "We're not involved right now."

A newly released transcript of "Sports Illustrated" writer Pete Thamel's Sept. 23 interview with Te'o gives a hint at the staggering depth of the deception.

Te'o told Thamel that Lennay Kekua's real name was Melelengei, but since no one could pronounce it properly it was shortened to Lennay. But her family nicknamed her Lala, he said.

Te'o's knowledge about the details of his girlfriend's life was often murky, including her majors in school, occupation and extent of her injuries after an alleged April 28 car accident with a drunk driver.

What he was absolutely clear about was how much time he spent in contact with her, especially while she was in the hospital recovering from the car accident, which led to the discovery of her leukemia.

"I talked to my girlfriend every single day," Te'o told Themel. "I slept on the phone with her every single day. When she was going through chemo, she would have all these pains and the doctors were saying they were trying to give her medicine to make her sleep. She still couldn't sleep. She would say, 'Just call my boyfriend and have him on the phone with me, and I can sleep.' I slept on the phone with her every single night."

He would spend eight hours a night with someone, somewhere, breathing on the other end, he told Thamel.

Te'o recounted how his girlfriend who was "on a machine" after being in a coma.

"We lost her, actually, twice. She flatlined twice. They revived her twice," he said. "It was just a trippy situation."

For a while Kekua was unable to talk and he described the nurse-deemed "miracle" of how Kekua's breathing would pick up when she heard his voice on the phone.

"There were lengthy, long telephone conversations. There was sleeping with the phone on connected to each other," Swarbrick said. "The issue of who it is, who's playing what role, what's real and what's not here is a more complex question than I can get into."

Perhaps one of the most touching displays of love from Kekua to Te'o, he told the writer, was the one-page letter she would write him on her iPad before each game. One of her siblings, often her twin brother Noa, would then read him the letter over the phone before sending it to him.

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