After 'final assault' in Algeria, details are slow to emerge

CAIRO — It was a bloody ordeal with tick-tock drama and a watching world.

The hostages at a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert faced four harrowing days trapped between two dangers: Islamist militants who forced some of them to wear explosives belts, and the Algerian military, which showed no inclination to negotiate for their release.

After the army carried out its "final assault" Saturday, Algerian officials said that at least 23 hostages and 32 militants had been killed since gunmen startled the world and rallied Al Qaeda-linked extremists by storming the complex before dawn Wednesday.

The nationalities of the hostages were not revealed. Nearly 700 Algerians and 107 foreigners had been freed or had escaped from the gas field in eastern Algeria over the last two days. When the final assault began Saturday, at least 30 foreigners, including an estimated seven Americans, were unaccounted for.

The United States is "still trying to get accurate information" on what happened, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reporters while traveling in London. The only confirmed American death was that of Frederick Buttaccio, 58, of Katy, Texas.

Many details of the tense, bloody hours at the complex remain murky. Governments whose citizens were hostages, including those of Britain and Japan, complained that the Algerians did not apprise them of what was unfolding. Reports suggest that no foreign capitals were consulted before the army's first raid on Thursday.

"The loss of life as a result of the attacks is appalling and unacceptable," said British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, who confirmed word from the Algerians that the hostage crisis was over. "We must be clear that it is the terrorists that bear full responsibility for it."

French President Francois Hollande praised Algeria's handling of the crisis.

"When you have people taken hostage in such large numbers by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages — as they did — Algeria has an approach which to me ... is the most appropriate, because there could be no negotiation," he told reporters.

Algerian officials said the heavily armed militants planted mines and threatened to blow up the complex and kill hostages or use them as shields to escape across the desert into Libya. News reports and accounts from freed hostages suggest a number of hostages were killed Thursday when an army helicopter fired on four, or perhaps five, vehicles moving within the compound.

At one point, the militants reportedly offered to trade two captive Americans for two extremist figures jailed in the United States, including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in 1995 of plotting to bomb landmarks in New York.

Saturday's army raid killed 11 militants but not before extremists executed their final seven hostages, two of whom may have been Americans. By nightfall, troops had discovered 15 burned bodies and were securing the plant, where hours earlier gunfights had played out amid the natural gas processing plant's silver pipes and prefabricated housing.

"Our determination is stronger than ever to work with allies right around the world to root out and defeat this terrorist scourge and those who encourage it," said British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Other captives unaccounted for included 14 Japanese, five Britons, two Malaysians and six employees of Statoil, a Norwegian firm. Their fates exposed the heightened risk to Algeria's gas and oil fields, and the skilled foreigners who help work them , at a time of growing Islamic extremism radiating across much of North Africa.

The militants were connected to a group known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which arose from the Algerian civil war in the 1990s. The attackers reportedly included Libyans, Egyptians and at least one commander from Niger. They said their assault on the compound was in retaliation for French airstrikes recently on rebels fighting to forge an Islamic state in neighboring Mali.

A White House official discounted that theory, saying the attack was planned far in advance of the French intervention in Mali. Accounts by freed hostages and statements by Algerian officials indicated that the militants, some of whom wore fatigues and appeared to know their way around the compound, may have been assisted by contacts inside.

The gas complex, in a town called In Amenas, sits on a border rife with militants, traffickers and weapons, many of them looted and flowing in from an unstable Libya. The suspected mastermind of the hostage crisis was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a one-eyed Al Qaeda recruiter whose nicknames include Mr. Marlboro for his smuggling networks. He was believed to have been aiding the rebels in Mali.

The militants at the plant were armed with machine guns and rocket launchers, according to Algerian officials. Since early Thursday the compound was encircled by army tanks, troops and special forces. The intensity of the gun battles and fear within the plant was described in recent days by freed captives.

A man identified as Brahim, an Algerian driver for gas plant technicians, told French journalists of his escape with a group including three foreigners early in the siege:

"As bullets rang out nonstop, we cut holes in the metal fence with large clippers, and once through, we all started running," he said. "There were about 50 of us plus the three foreigners. We were quickly taken in by the special forces stationed just a dozen meters from the base. I didn't look back. All I saw during my escape was that a plane was flying over the site."

The natural gas complex at In Amenas is operated by BP, Statoil and Sonatrach, the Algerian national oil company. BP said four of its employees were missing.

"While the situation has evolved, it may still be some time before we have the clarity we all desire," said Bob Dudley, BP Group chief executive. "While not confirmed, tragically we have grave fears that there may be one or more fatalities within this number."

jeff.fleishman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.

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Google CEO Page on Apple’s ‘thermonuclear’ Android war: ‘How well is that working?’

Google (GOOG) CEO Larry Page seems unimpressed by Apple’s (AAPL) “thermonuclear war” against his company’s operating system. In an interview with Wired posted Thursday, Page was asked to respond to reports about the late Steve Jobs being “competitive enough to claim that he was willing to ‘go to thermonuclear war’ on Android.” Page responded with one sentence: “How well is that working?” Wired followed up by asking Page whether he though that “Android’s huge lead in market share is decisive” in the battle between the companies and Page only responded that “Android has been very successful, and we’re very excited about it.”

[More from BGR: Cable companies called ‘monopolies that stifle competition and innovation’]

While Apple’s strategy of suing Android vendors has had some notable successes for the company — particularly this past summer when it won a $ 1 billion patent verdict against rival Samsung (005930) — it still hasn’t stopped Android’s rise in both the smartphone and tablet markets, and devices such as the Galaxy S III and the Nexus 7 have proven to be among the most popular released over the past year. So when Page dismisses the significance of Apple’s legal war against Android, he’s got a good point: Some high-profile Apple victories have done very little to hurt consumer interest in Google’s open-source mobile OS so far.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Obamas join military families for kids' concert

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia are rocking out with hundreds of kids from military families and Washington-area public schools at the Kids' Inaugural Concert.

Pop star Usher started off the proceedings Saturday evening with his hit song "Yeah." The concert is chock-full of A-list talent, including Katy Perry, Mindless Behavior and members of the cast of the Fox series "Glee."

The concert continues a tradition started at the 2009 inauguration by honoring the nation's military families. It's being hosted by Mrs. Obama and the vice president's wife, Jill Biden, and emceed by Nick Cannon.

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Op-Ed Contributor: Eat Like a Mennonite

ON the second day of my chemical-detox diet, I was very hungry. I’d been eating like a rabbit, all carrots and greens that I’d gathered, barehanded, from the baskets of the farmer’s market, no gloves or plastic bags allowed. I cooked up some quinoa that I bought packaged in paper from the supermarket sometimes known as Whole Paycheck. I was effectively a vegan because I couldn’t find meat or cheese that wasn’t wrapped in plastic, and I didn’t have access to accommodating livestock.

My 7-year-old daughter and I were participating in a pilot study conducted in 2011 by the Silent Spring Institute and the Breast Cancer Fund (a follow-up study was published later that year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives). We had urinated into some glass containers a few weeks earlier, back when we were “normal” Americans, and now we were spending three days trying to reduce our exposure to plastics before supplying our urine again.

We wanted to see what it would take to nudge down our bodies’ levels of a handful of common chemicals with the potential to mimic or disrupt hormones, including phthalates (found in some plastics and added to products like lotions to bind fragrances), triclosan (an antibacterial ingredient in many soaps, toothpastes and cutting boards) and bisphenol A (or BPA, a plastic-hardener and epoxy additive that may affect children’s brain development and that some believe may be linked to breast and prostate cancers).

Manufacturers have phased BPA out of some products, and last year, the Food and Drug Administration outlawed its use in baby bottles and sippy cups. This month Suffolk County, N.Y., banned certain cash register receipts that carry it.

Risks aside, the normal phase was a lot more fun. My daughter and I painted our toenails, took floral-scented bubble baths, ate refried beans out of a can and drank a couple of sodas. Go America! For detox, I became an isolated Anxiety Mom. We scrubbed off the nail polish. I didn’t venture far from home because I couldn’t ride in a car (phthalates waft out of plastic interiors) or shop (because of those store receipts). That turned out to be something of a relief, since I couldn’t wear makeup or deodorant. I lost three pounds. It was practically like living in the 19th century, except for my trusty bicycle helmet, which I wore despite the fact that it is a terrific example of the technology BPA makes possible.

A study published in 2010 found a very effective way to reduce urinary phthalate levels was to live meatless in a Buddhist temple for five days. A study recently published in the journal NeuroToxicology found that pregnant women in Old Order Mennonite communities, which eschew many modern conveniences, had urinary BPA levels one-fourth the national median. Those Mennonites eat more fresh food than the rest of us and make their own dairy products, but they also buy fewer consumer goods, which can be additional sources of BPA. The chemical is found in dental fillings, eyeglass lenses and CDs, among other products.

In lab-animal studies, BPA has been linked to mammary gland tumors, prostate and urethra problems and cardiac irregularities. The Food and Drug Administration maintains that BPA is safe in low levels, although in 2010 it expressed “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland in fetuses, infants and young children.” And yet, last year’s bottle announcement seemed to be less about protecting infants than about putting confused parents at ease.

If anything, it has had the opposite effect. Parents who were worried about exposing their babies to a hormone-mimicking substance are just as worried about exposing their unborn children to it in the womb, or passing it along to newborns through breast milk. New sippy cups won’t change that.

One thing that could is adopting my extreme detox regime. My original BPA level was 5.1 nanograms per milliliter of urine, putting me in the upper quartile of Americans. (Levels here are, incidentally, twice those of Canada, which began restricting some uses of BPA in 2008.) After my three days of detox, my level dropped to 0.8, for an 84 percent reduction (I was not quite able to out-Mennonite the Mennonites — their everyday level was 0.71). My daughter’s level dropped even lower, to 0.65. That’s my little cave girl. The researchers speculated that perhaps my polycarbonate eyeglasses kept me from shedding more BPA.

In fact it’s surprisingly easy to change our bodies’ BPA chemistry; it just requires a big shift in eating habits and behavior for most of us. The substance passes in and out of the body quickly, but we are fed it in a daily drip.

So is it time to crank up my crank meter and demand that my children step away from the rubber duckie and join a religious sect? No. I like modern life, and I really like those canned refrieds.

Parents have enough to worry about without scrutinizing labels of baby bottles and wearing hazmat gloves to the grocery store. That’s why we should be relieved when the F.D.A. and local governments like Suffolk County help take over this doleful parenting task for us. It’s why we need the government to require testing of commercial chemicals for hormonal effects, and to regulate them in a meaningful way. And it’s why we need manufacturers to design products with safer substances in the first place.

As far as my family is concerned, we can eat only so much quinoa out of a paper bag.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

 An earlier version of this article misstated the level of bisphenol A, a chemical compound used in consumer products, in the writer’s urine before she went on a detoxification diet. It was 5.1 nanograms per milliliter — not millimeter.

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Downtown L.A.'s edgy arts district is neighborhood in transition

When Gideon Kotzer set out to open a discount electronics store in the mid-1990s, he deliberately chose an old warehouse in the cultural middle of nowhere — the arts district of downtown Los Angeles, which charitably could be called sketchy.

Crazy Gideon's on Traction Avenue became an island of commerce in an area that saw little other retail activity beyond illegal drug sales. The store's remoteness in an otherwise unwelcoming warren of aging brick and concrete industrial buildings was central to Kotzer's business strategy.

"He bought that space with the mind-set that if people would drive to a desolate, faraway neighborhood, they wouldn't want to leave empty-handed," his son Daniel Kotzer said.

PHOTOS: A neighborhood in transition

Crazy Gideon's has closed, and its formerly shabby space in the 1917 structure is expected to open to the public again this year as an expansive brew pub serving house-made beer with meals. The upgrade is emblematic of changes going on throughout the arts district.

The neighborhood along the Los Angeles River east of downtown's Civic Center is drawing favorable comparisons to New York's meatpacking district, where trendy shops, restaurants, hotels and offices have taken over many industrial buildings that were strictly blue collar for decades.

The transformation has such momentum that some of the neighborhood's biggest supporters expect that it will be difficult to find artists in the arts district in another decade as gentrification drives up rents and pushes low-paid artists to cheaper locales.

But for now, the arts district is in a sweet spot of transition for many. Vegetable wholesalers and furniture makers share streets with top-flight restaurants and front-line technology and entertainment firms. Its walls sport elaborate murals — and foreboding razor wire.

"There are very rough patches," said architect Scott Johnson, who lives in a condominium on Industrial Street. "It's muscular. It's complicated. It's interesting."

Part of the appeal for Johnson, who lived in the meatpacking district in the late 1970s, is the roughness most suburbanites would find off-putting. He calls it "authenticity" in a time when "we're getting bombarded with fake stuff."

The spine of the arts district is Mateo Street, a truck-laden thoroughfare named after early landowner Matthew "Don Mateo" Keller. The district evolved from agricultural uses including Mateo's winery in the mid-1800s to being the city's industrial heart in the early 20th century.

One of the most ambitious private developments of that era was Union Terminal Annex, which was connected by rail to the city's seaport and was the second-largest wholesale terminal in the world. Two of the four large remaining buildings are occupied by clothing manufacturer American Apparel Inc., and the owners are improving and divvying up long-vacant remaining space for other business tenants including the makers of Splendid and Ella Moss apparel.

The advanced age of the neighborhood's buildings worked against the district in recent decades as businesses moved to more modern, efficient industrial properties elsewhere in the region. Those that remained often barricaded themselves behind tall gates and barbed wire as the area gained a reputation for crime and homelessness.

"There were drug addicts and prostitutes on the corner when we started," said restaurateur Yassmin Sarmadi, who began working on French bistro Church & State seven years ago. "Now limousines pull up on a regular basis."

Sarmadi opened her bistro in the former West Coast headquarters of National Biscuit Co., a seven-story factory built in 1925 that was renovated and converted to condos in 2006. She was attracted to the historic nature of the building, she said, and the fact that it was remote from the elite restaurant enclaves of the Westside.

"It was far more exciting for me to be in a place that wasn't already 'there,' so to speak," Sarmadi said.

She lives in the arts district and enjoys the company of artists who are neighbors, but knows that the march of prosperity will make it hard for some of them to stay. It may take 10 more years to become as affluent as once-lowly Venice, Sarmadi said, but gentrification will come.

"I think it's inevitable," she said. "It brings a tear to my eye, but it's also progress."

Guiding change is Tyler Stonebraker, who helps young businesses such as film and television production company Skunk set up shop in old warehouses and factories.

Stonebraker's real estate firm Creative Space caters to creative companies that consider nontraditional offices essential to their identities and part of their appeal to desirable workers in the millennial generation.

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Degree of L.A.'s fiscal problems splits mayoral candidates

A virtual unknown straining to make his mark in the race for mayor of Los Angeles offered an alarming assessment of the city's finances. "We are actually on the brink of bankruptcy," Emanuel Pleitez, a tech executive and former aide to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said in a recent debate. "This is not a joke."

City Councilman Eric Garcetti, one of the front-runners to replace Villaraigosa, scoffed. "Every time you hear from folks who say we are about to be bankrupt it reminds me of that minister who said the end of the world is coming," Garcetti told the audience. "Then when it didn't come he had to change the date."

The conflicting sentiments that night early this month on a stage in Beverly Hills reflect an emerging split in the contest to replace Villaraigosa: Top contenders Garcetti and City Controller Wendy Greuel deny that there is an imminent fiscal threat to the city. They prefer to talk about expanding the city economy to bring in more taxes and their experience in previous budget management, saying they have proved they know how to make tough choices.

The candidates from outside City Hall sound the alarm, blame the incumbents and demand more specific reforms to close deficits that have lingered at over $200 million annually. Pleitez and lawyer and former prosecutor Kevin James talk about shifting future city workers from guaranteed-benefit pensions to something more like 401(k)s, not unlike a controversial proposal former Mayor Richard Riordan made last year.

The divide over city finance reflects several verities of politics in general and the L.A. mayor's race in particular. Top contenders often don't want to offer specifics until they feel they have to, lest they alienate one voting bloc or another. Greuel and Garcetti particularly don't warm to talk of future cuts in the workforce, pay or benefits, since some of their most ardent support is expected to come from unions that represent municipal employees.

Lesser-knowns like James and Pleitez feel they have nothing to lose in appearing to tackle truths the current elected officials won't. But the outsiders also ignore belt-tightening already accomplished within L.A. City Hall, such as hiking the retirement age for future workers. And they don't dwell on niceties, like employee contracts, that complicate reform.

Although she too has long served in city government, Councilwoman Jan Perry increasingly has adopted the outsiders' more urgent tone. She told the North Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce at a breakfast meeting last week in Northridge that the city could become "insolvent" if more fixes aren't made.

At a Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. debate this week, Perry said that new hires at the city should be shifted from defined-benefit pensions to less-costly defined-contribution plans. That put her at odds with Greuel and Garcetti, who both said "no" when asked if they would support such a change.

"I want to renegotiate our employee contracts, our pension agreements to sustainable levels," Perry said, "with every employee paying their fair share of healthcare and pension costs."

The pension issue has been pushed to the forefront in the last two years, with city budget analysts predicting that retirement costs could consume almost 25% of the city's general fund budget by 2016, up from 19% in 2012.

The city government's top budget official, Miguel Santana, warned last April of the potential for bankruptcy, though his report did not put Los Angeles on the "brink," as candidates James and Pleitez have. Still, City Administrative Officer Santana suggested a range of possible changes, from raising taxes to having private firms or nonprofits take over for city workers at the Los Angeles Zoo, the Convention Center and possibly other locales.

Such suggestions inflame organized labor, which wants to keep the positions on the public payroll, while maintaining pay and benefits as best they can. Santana's aggressive management has made him an issue in the mayoral campaign. At a labor forum in December, union members wanted to know if the future mayors would keep him on the job. Councilwoman Perry again stood out, suggesting she would keep the administrator, while Garcetti, Greuel and James deferred judgment.

Going forward, Santana has said that the city's perennial deficits won't be fixed with any single reform. Because the city has a legal obligation to maintain the pensions of current employees, reforms to the system typically apply to future hires — meaning most pension savings can only be realized years from now.

The need for more immediate savings is likely to make other initiatives, like increasing the amount employees contribute toward their healthcare, more pressing for the next mayor.

Negotiations led to the city's engineers and architects beginning to pay 5% of their healthcare premiums starting a year ago. But 40% of the city's police and fire employees and many other civilian workers pay nothing toward their healthcare premiums.

Santana's office has projected that getting all workers to pay 10% of their health premiums would save the city $51 million a year.

A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation released in September found that the average American worker pays 27% of the cost for employer-sponsored healthcare, coming to $4,316 a year. Pushing Los Angeles employees to pay 10% of their premium would mean they would have to kick in at least $528 a year for their healthcare, city budget officials said.

But city employees can't be expected to see their low-cost care go up without a fight. "We have a track record of partnering with the city to help it through hard times," said Ian Thompson, a spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 721. "But we're skeptical when the CAO unilaterally proposes more cuts to city workers' benefits as the only solution."

Perry is the only one of the current elected officials to say clearly in recent public appearances that healthcare expenses will have to be on the table. Garcetti told a debate audience earlier this month that he's capable of making such tough calls, noting that some city workers have already been pushed to bear that expense.

"People are paying out of pocket for their healthcare premiums who were paying $0 before that," Garcetti said. "You think that was easy? You think it's easy to go to people and say we are going to take something away? But leadership is about telling people not what they want to hear but what they need to hear."

Garcetti said Thursday night in Sherman Oaks that the best path to balancing the budget in the future will be "to grow our economy," through a tax cut and other reforms, thereby building a larger tax base.

Similarly, Greuel said at a debate early in the month at Temple Beth Jacob in Beverly Hills that economic growth — through the expansion of business at the Port of Los Angeles and LAX and other initiatives — would fix the budget best. On pensions, her most specific proposal was for blocking pensions of employees who have committed a crime.

As she often does, Greuel concluded by saying her work as controller —where she claims to have "identified $160 million in potential savings" — proves she has the management chops to root out excess.

james.rainey@latimes.com

Twitter:latimesrainey

Times staff writer Michael Finnegan contributed to this report.

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RIM offers Android developers up to $2,000 to port apps to BlackBerry 10 this weekend

RIM (RIMM) really wants Android developers to bring their apps over to BlackBerry 10, and it’s got the cash to prove it. Via AndroidGuys, it seems that RIM will hold a “BlackBerry 10 Last Chance Port-A-Thon” that will pay Android developers $ 100 for every approved app they port over to BlackBerry 10, with a limite of 20 different paid apps per developer. RIM says that the “port-a-thon” will start at noon Friday and run for the following 36 hours. App developers have shown some strong interest in BlackBerry 10 so far as RIM announced this week that it had received 15,000 app submission over just two days during the last port-a-thon, although the company didn’t mention how much influence its “really cool” SDK had in convincing companies to develop for its new platform.

[More from BGR: Samsung’s latest monster smartphone will reportedly have a 5.8-inch screen]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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'Ripper Street' stars Macfadyen, 1880s London

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Matthew Macfadyen is perfectly presentable in jeans and a crewneck sweater that coordinates nicely with the blue of his eyes.

But the look is far from the elegant attire he wore as Mr. Darcy opposite Keira Knightley's Elizabeth in the 2005 film "Pride & Prejudice." And his posture is just as casual, which he acknowledges might offend the aristocratic character's diehard fans.

"You're slouching! What are you doing? Stand up straight, man!" Macfadyen says, teasing himself.

He looks back fondly on what he calls the "iconic" role drawn from Jane Austen's novel. But the British actor who's also known to audiences for his part as an intelligence officer in the series "MI-5" ("Spooks" in the U.K.) welcomes the chance to switch gears.

"I, as most actors, want to mix it up and do different things. Otherwise it gets boring and tiresome, not only for yourself but for everyone else seeing you do the same kind of thing," he said. "The joy of being an actor is to play different parts, do something different."

Macfadyen's latest chance for diversity comes in "Ripper Street," an 1880s police drama set on the gritty and untamed streets of London's East End around the period that serial killer Jack the Ripper terrorized the area.

The series, starring Macfadyen as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, debuts Saturday (9 p.m. EST) on BBC America after starting its British run this month. BBC America is home to another rough-and-tumble, 18th-century police drama, "Copper," set in 1860s New York City and the channel's first original scripted series.

The mysterious and brutal Jack the Ripper has been recycled throughout pop culture in films including 1979's "Time After Time" and 2001's "From Hell" with Johnny Depp. But series creator Richard Warlow said the killer is a backdrop and invisible character for "Ripper Street."

"What we wanted to do really was to tell stories about the streets down which he walked and committed his crimes in the wake of those terrible murders," Warlow said, "and how it affected the community and, most importantly, the police that tried and failed to catch him."

Each episode will include what he called a "stand-alone crime" as well as pull at the thread of Reid's life, including those surrounding him at work and at home.

Macfadyen said he was reluctant to take on another series after two plus-seasons on "MI-5" because of TV's demanding production schedules. Then the "Ripper Street" pilot script came his way last year.

"I thought the Jack the Ripper thing had been done before ... but I loved it. The thing that was most attractive was the language and the way he (Warlow) constructs the sentences ... they feel very muscular without feeling sort of wanky and silly. ... They feel very muscular."

There is an antiquated eloquence to the dialogue that contrasts with the drama's mean streets and violent sexuality of the first case tackled by Reid and his cohorts, police Sgt. Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn, "Game of Thrones") and American forensics whiz Capt. Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg, "The Ex List").

Macfadyen said he was drawn to his character's modern sensibility.

Reid isn't "a sort of stock detective character. He's a very free thinking, forward-looking kind of man, not a sort of jaded 'seen it all' copper. So I was intrigued by that," he said.

The detective's viewpoint is so expansive that he can't resist admiring the potential of an early version of a motion picture camera — even when he's just thwarted its use in making a 19th-century snuff film.

The scene had slipped Macfadyen's mind when he watched the episode at home in London and his wife, actress Keeley Hawes ("Upstairs Downstairs"), suddenly took alarmed note of what was unfolding on the screen.

"My 12-year-old stepson was watching and we said, 'OK, bedtime!" said Macfadyen, who has two children with Hawes.

But he considers the show "punchy and brave" for a mature audience and would like to see it go at least another season, in part for selfish reasons.

"Jerome, Adam and I get on so well, very happily. I know actors always say they love each other," he said, then smiled. "That's not always the case."

___

Online:

http://www.bbcamerica.com

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Controversial full-body scanners to be removed from airports

The Transportation Security Administration is removing controversial full-body scanners made by a Torrance manufacturer, winning praise from privacy advocates and passenger-rights groups that raised questions about the health effects of the devices.

Rapiscan, a unit of OSI Systems Inc., manufactured about 200 full-body scanners used by the TSA to screen passengers for hidden weapons at airports across the country. The machines generated a storm of protest because the devices use low levels of radiation to create what resembles a nude image of screened passengers.

The machines, one of two types of scanners used by the TSA for passenger screening, will be pulled from all airports by this summer. The TSA had already begun to remove the Rapiscan scanners from Los Angeles International Airport in October to replace them with faster screening machines.

The agency won't use the Rapiscan full-body scanners because the company could not produce a software upgrade to protect the privacy of passengers in time to meet a congressional deadline, according to TSA and Rapsican officials.

Privacy advocates and others praised the move, saying the scanners violated the privacy of passengers and exposed them to unhealthy levels of radiation — a charge the TSA denies.

"This is a significant victory for privacy," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that sued to try to force the TSA to hold public hearings over the deployment of full-body scanners at airports. "The announcement by the TSA is recognition that if devices don't respect the privacy of the public, they don't belong here."

Rapiscan has agreed to pay the cost of removing its scanners from airports. Most will be replaced by a second type of scanner that uses radio waves and shows hidden objects projected onto a generic avatar image on a screen — not on a nude-like image of a passenger. Those scanners are built by New York-based L-3 Communications Holdings.

"It's good news and a step in the right direction," said Brandon M. Macsata, executive director of the Assn. for Airline Passenger Rights, an advocacy group that has questioned the health effects of the X-ray scans on passengers. "We still have questions about whether these machines really make airports that much safer."

The Rapiscan scanners use low-level X-rays to create what looks like a naked image of screened passengers to uncover weapons hidden under clothes. TSA officers in isolated rooms see the images and then notify other agents at the security lines if hidden weapons are spotted.

Since 2007, the TSA has used full-body scanners, in addition to metal detectors and random pat-down searches, to try to prevent terrorists from sneaking explosives onto planes. But the TSA has been accused by privacy groups, members of Congress and others of using extreme tactics.

Responding to questions about the safety of the scanners, TSA officials said the machines have been repeatedly tested by medical experts and found to expose passengers to levels of radiation well below safe health standards.

To address privacy concerns, Congress imposed a June 2013 deadline for Rapiscan to come up with a software upgrade that would prevent the scanner from showing TSA agents the nude-like images. But Rapiscan officials said the company wouldn't be able to meet that deadline.

"TSA has strict requirements that all vendors must meet for security effectiveness and efficiency since the use of this technology is critical to TSA's efforts to keep the traveling public safe," the TSA said in a statement.

Rapiscan representatives called the TSA decision "unfortunate" but noted that they fulfilled their $15-million contract to build the machines and continue to produce security devices for the TSA, including luggage scanners and metal detectors.

Peter Kant, executive vice president of Rapiscan, said his company won't collect on the $5-million contract to complete the software upgrade and must pay for the cost of removing the existing scanners from airports across the country. But he added: "For a $400-million company, that's a pretty small number."

The scanners that will be removed from airports will be used by the military and federal law enforcement, among other government agencies, for security screening, Kant said.

Rapiscan has more than 1,000 employees worldwide and reported nearly $400 million in sales in 2012.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

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Algeria raid puts a lawless region in the spotlight

CAIRO — The offensive by Algerian soldiers to free hostages at a natural gas complex has refocused world attention on the dangers of a lawless desert region bristling with gunrunners, smugglers and a virulent strain of Islamic ideology.

Coming days after French airstrikes on Islamist militants in neighboring Mali, the raid Thursday killed or wounded many militants and an unspecified number of Western and Algerian hostages, the Algerian government said. Officials in Algiers, the capital, said late in the evening that they had wrapped up the assault on the compound near the Algerian-Libyan border deep in the Sahara desert.

"The operation resulted in the neutralization of a large number of terrorists and the freeing of a considerable number of hostages," Communications Minister Mohamed Said Belaid told state-run media. "Unfortunately we deplore also the death of some.... We do not have final numbers."

The Algerian news agency said 45 hostages, including Americans, escaped the site. But later Algerian media reports indicated that only four to six foreign hostages were freed and that there were a number of "victims."

A Mauritanian news organization quoting a militant spokesman suggested that gunfire from Algerian military helicopters struck two vehicles attempting to flee the compound, killing 35 foreigners and 15 kidnappers, including the militant group's commander. The differing accounts were impossible to confirm or reconcile and epitomized a chaotic day that appeared to raise questions from Western leaders over the operation's planning.

In addition to as many as seven Americans, captives included Algerians, Britons, Japanese, Norwegians and other foreigners.

The army raid marked a stunning twist in a drama that had raised fears of a long siege and highlighted the revived Islamist extremism in the region.

To the west of Algeria lies Mali, where Islamist rebels have intensified their fight in recent days to overthrow the government, prompting French military action backed by American logistical support. To the east lie Tunisia and Libya, where revolutions beginning in 2010 overthrew President Zine el Abidine ben Ali in Tunis and Moammar Kadafi in Tripoli.

Since then, militant and radical Islamist groups, including Algeria's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, have become more emboldened amid the political upheaval of new governments. Western countries have grown increasingly concerned that North Africa could become a seedbed for international terrorism.

The hostage drama unfolded in a gas field known as In Amenas, close to the border with Libya, a country of particular concern to Algeria. Extremists and weapons looted from Kadafi's military and police have flowed across the border for months.

Farther east, Egyptian authorities are concerned that militants from Algeria and Libya have joined terrorist cells in the Sinai Peninsula along the Israeli border.

It was the strife in Mali, however, that apparently led to the militant takeover of the Western-run gas compound Wednesday. The Algerian militants, who belonged to an Al Qaeda-linked group called the Signed-in-Blood Battalion, said they were acting in retaliation for French airstrikes against advancing Malian rebels. They reportedly threatened to blow up the plant if Algerian commandoes attempted to free the hostages.

After the compound was seized by the militants, hundreds of Algerian soldiers firing warning shots ringed the remote compound as helicopters skimmed overhead. The militants asked for safe passage to Libya by having the hostages accompany them. Algerian officials, who over the years have viciously cracked down on Islamic radicals, said they would not negotiate such requests.

"The authorities do not negotiate, no negotiations," Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said on state television. "We have received their demands, but we didn't respond to them."

The Algerian government was under pressure from the U.S., Britain and other countries whose nationals were taken hostage. But the raid caught some by surprise and appeared to irritate some Western leaders. British Prime Minister David Cameron's office said that he would have preferred to have been told in advance of the operation.

"I think we should be prepared for the possibility of further bad news, very difficult news in this extremely difficult situation," said Cameron.

The State Department declined to provide details of the Algerian offensive, saying it could risk the security of hostages, some of whom were reportedly forced to wear belts laden with explosives.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters: "We are certainly concerned about reports of loss of life and we are seeking clarity from the government of Algeria."

The Algerians are "used to fighting terrorism, in their own, quite hard way," said Mathieu Guidere is professor of "Islamology" at the University of Toulouse in France and author of The New Terrorists. "It's likely the deaths at the petrol base were as a result of the assault by the Algerian security forces."

Reports have suggested that as many as 41 foreigners were being held along with scores of Algerians. An Irishman who was one of the hostages contacted his family to say he had been freed.

The natural gas field complex at In Amenas, which supplies Europe and Turkey, is a joint venture operated by BP; Statoil, a Norwegian firm; and Sonatrach, the Algerian national oil company.

The assault on the compound dramatically changed the dynamics of Algeria's decades-long campaign against radicals. Militants had rarely, if ever, targeted oil and gas operations, even during the civil war when few rules applied amid beheadings and massacres. The militant attack was a direct strike at the government and the nation's economic and political stability.

Rich in oil and gas, with a spectacular coast and vast deserts, Algeria fought a civil war in the 1990s that killed more than 100,000 people. The conflict began when the military, fearing Islamists would come to power, shut down parliamentary elections and the country collapsed into bloodshed.

The government offered an amnesty program more than a decade ago. Thousands of militants accepted but hardcore members of what had become AQIM resisted. The group publicly joined Al Qaeda in 2006, sending recruits to fight U.S. forces in Iraq while expanding its suicide bombings and kidnappings of businessmen and Westerners for ransom in Algeria.

AQIM and other Algerian radicals are heavily armed and fluid, shifting much of their attention last year to neighboring Mali, where they joined rebels and Islamists in a war to overthrow the government. Mali has attracted extremists from across Africa and the Middle East who are attempting to exploit the country's instability to create an Islamist state.

Two top radicals are believed connected to the hostage taking: Abdelmalek Droukdel, AQIM's leader, has called for militants to target France over its intervention in Mali, and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a mercurial, one-eyed smuggler, kidnapper and jihadist, runs an AQIM splinter group, the Signed-in Blood Battalion, which claimed to have carried out Wednesday's pre-dawn raid on the gas compound.

The hostages at the natural gas complex "who managed to reach loved ones abroad said the terrorists that captured them have Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan accents," said an Algerian risk assessment analyst who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of his job.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Special correspondents Kim Willsher in Paris and Reem Abdellatif in Cairo and Times staff writers Henry Chu in London and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.

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