SIx In The Morning

20 January 2013 Last updated at 08:10 GMT

Algeria crisis: Obama blames 'terrorists' for deaths

US President Barack Obama has blamed "terrorists" for the death of at least 23 hostages at a besieged desert gas facility in Algeria.

A four-day siege at the In Amenas site was ended on Saturday by an army raid.

At least five Britons, five Norwegians and 10 Japanese are dead or missing, while Algeria said its troops had killed all 32 hostage-takers.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the US would go after al-Qaeda wherever they tried to hide.

"This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al-Qaeda and other violent extremist groups in North Africa," said Mr Obama on Saturday.

"We will continue to work closely with all of our partners to combat the scourge of terrorism in the region."

'Political coward' Binyamin Netanyahu sees rift with Barack Obama widen

Israeli prime minister's aides accused American president of interfering in Israel's elections

• Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
• The Observer, Sunday 20 January 2013

Already fractious relations between Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama have been further strained in the runup to the president's inauguration on Monday and the Israeli prime minister's anticipated victory in Tuesday's election.

Netanyahu aides accused Obama of interfering in the Israeli election following publication of an article by Jeffrey Goldberg, which quoted the president as saying: "Israel doesn't know what its own best interests are." Obama, wrote Goldberg, viewed Netanyahu as a "political coward".

The Israeli president, Shimon Peres, who has voiced alarm at the rupture between the two leaders, was due to meet a delegation of US senators, led by Republican John McCain, in Jerusalem on Saturday night to discuss strengthening strategic relations between the two allies.

AN BIRRELL

Sunday 20 January 2013

Musicians of Mali fight for nation's soul

As Islamist militants try to take over, suppressed artists show support for the French

The image of Mali has long been a gentle one. It is a land of magical music and mouth-watering mangoes, of mud mosques and medieval manuscripts. A country dripping with history and culture that was slowly forcing its way on to the tourist map for Western visitors. Now, following the intervention of French warplanes nine days ago, it will be more associated in most people's minds with Islamic militancy.

This is a tragic twist for a people whose faith revolves around the more tolerant strands of Sufism. For all its poverty, Mali has traditionally been open to outsiders. It is a nation where women are prominent and musicians more closely entwined with everyday life than perhaps any other place on earth. Music has long been part of the social and political fabric, from praise singers who, for centuries, passed on the oral history to the state-funded bands used to bond the nation after independence.

Snakes and Ladders: Investment Banking on the Brink

By Martin Hesse, Thomas Schulz, Christoph Scheuermann and Anne Seith

For decades, investment bankers have held the key to untold riches -- but now they're being laid off by the tens of thousands. As the crisis forces the industry to search for a new identity, is it ready to mend its ways?

The suicide victims chose a location with symbolic significance. Last fall, only a few weeks apart, a businesswoman and a banker went to the Coq d'Argent, an upscale restaurant and hot spot in the world of London high finance, located on the top floor of a shopping complex, to end their lives.

The woman put down her purse and jumped from the restaurant's cozy rooftop terrace. The banker, an investment specialist, jumped into the building's atrium around lunchtime.

The "City," the casual term the financial center uses in reference to itself, was shocked. The suicides are the most glaring expression of an apocalyptic mood that seems to have gripped all of London. Hospitals are reporting a high incidence of patients with alcohol problems, while top restaurants are fighting for every customer.

Late poll surge by Berlusconi may shake, rattle, and roll Italian elections

Technocrat prime minister and candidate Mario Monti calls rival billionaire a 'pied piper' who promises more than he can deliver. And Silvio Berlusconi will likely not win the top Italian job outright. But late surge is causing big waves in coalition building options.

By Steve Scherer, Reuters 

ROME

Four-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi extended his surge in Italy's opinion polls Friday.

The unexpected rise of the love-him/hate-him former leader in Italy increases the prospects that the center-left Democratic Party now leading the race will have to seek a pact with Mario Monti's centrist bloc.

With a little over a month to go before the vote, Mr. Berlusconi narrowed the gap with Pier Luigi Bersani's center-left coalition by 4 percentage points versus a week ago, but still trails by six points, today's poll shows.

His gains follow a blitz on almost every television talk show in Italy, where the 76-year-old billionaire has mixed blistering attacks on Mr. Monti's technocrat rule in the past year. He also attacked Germany, and the left, and promised to restore growth and scrap a hated property tax.

The Berlusconi surge has been reminiscent of the 2006 race in Italy, when the flamboyant showman clawed back 10 percentage points and nearly robbed Romano Prodi of what looked like a certain victory just a month before national elections.

CIA drone strikes will get pass in counterterrorism ‘playbook,’ officials say

By Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Karen DeYoung, Sunday, January 20, 4:57 AM

The Obama administration is nearing completion of a detailed counterterrorism manual that is designed to establish clear rules for targeted-killing operations but leaves open a major exemption for the CIA’s campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.

The carve-out would allow the CIA to continue pounding al-Qaeda and Taliban targets for a year or more before the agency is forced to comply with more stringent rules spelled out in a classified document that officials have described as a counterterrorism “playbook.”

The document, which is expected to be submitted to President Obama for final approval within weeks, marks the culmination of a year-long effort by the White House to codify its counterterrorism policies and create a guide for lethal operations through Obama’s second term.

A senior U.S. official involved in drafting the document said that a few issues remain unresolved but described them as minor. The senior U.S. official said the playbook “will be done shortly.”