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Al Qaeda terrorists have seized a gas field in Algeria and have taken 40 Western hostages. 3 have been executed. The terrorists successfully thwarted a military raid Wednesday night. The hostage nationalities are US, Britain, Norway, France and Japan. 150 Algerian hostages were released...

The Obama administration is condemning an Islamist attack on a natural gas field in southern Algeria and confirming that Americans are among those being held hostage. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters in Italy that Americans were among the hostages and called the incident a "terrorist attack."

(Reuters) - Islamist fighters seized dozens of Western and Algerian hostages in a dawn raid on a natural gas facility deep in the Sahara on Wednesday and demanded France halt a new offensive against rebels in neighboring Mali. Three people, among them one British and one French, were reported killed, but details were sketchy and numbers of those held at Tigantourine ranged from 41 foreigners - including perhaps seven Americans as well as Japanese and Europeans - to over 100 local staff, held separately and less closely watched.   What is clear is that with a dramatic counterpunch to this...

Thursday was inauguration day in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez — who has dominated Venezuelan politics one way or another for 14 years — was again sworn in as President. Only this time, the authoritarian populist could not take the oath in person. He departed for cancer surgery in Cuba on Dec. 10, 2012, and has not been seen in public since. This latest surgery is his fourth round of treatment in Cuba. Few expect Chavez to serve out this next six-year presidential term.

President François Hollande said on Thursday that Islamist groups holding French hostages in Africa were not trustworthy and should not be taken seriously after Al-Qaeda accused Paris of blocking negotiations for their release. There are a total of nine French hostages on the continent. On Tuesday the Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said France was snubbing talks proposed by the group to free four French citizens abducted in Niger in September 2010. "The less one speaks, the better one can work," Hollande told journalists during a visit to Rungis, a giant wholesale food market just outside Paris. "There have been...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Employees were closing up at a mall department store and preparing to go home when two gunmen stormed inside and took them hostage. The thugs stabbed one of the 14 Nordstrom Rack employees and sexually assaulted another before SWAT officers freed everyone early Friday, more than three hours after the ordeal began. It was unclear whether the gunmen stole anything before fleeing the store located near Los Angeles International Airport. Both remained at large. The harrowing incident began about 11 p.m. Thursday, when a man reported his girlfriend had called to say gunmen were in the...

Former FBI agent missing in Iran photographed in Guantánamo jumpsuit By Barney Henderson 8:44PM GMT 08 Jan 2013 The family of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran in 2007, have released pictures of him dressed in an orange jumpsuit like a Guantánamo Bay prisoner, as they continue to hold hope that he is still alive.

A gunman killed three people before police shot him dead Saturday in a shooting at a house in the Colorado town of Aurora, the same town that played host to a massacre at a cinema last year, police said. NBC television's local affiliate KUSA cited police as saying that one survivor escaped from the house, where an "armed and dangerous" man had earlier barricaded himself inside with hostages, AFP reported. "The barricade situation is resolved. The suspect is dead. There were also three other victims found dead inside," the Aurora Police Department announced on its official Twitter account. Aurora made...

OTTAWA — “Hell yes. Of course. Count on us.” With those words to an endangered U.S. diplomat in November 1979, John Sheardown, then Canada’s top immigration official in Iran, launched what would become known as “the Canadian Caper.” Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/John+Sheardown+player+rescue+diplomats+from+Iran+dead/7761539/story.html#ixzz2GjLJsOx0

On August 23, 2011 the FBI arrested Imam Abu Taubah aka Marcus Dwayne Robertson. The charge was possession of a firearm by a previously convicted felon, Case Number: 6:11-mj-1380 Attached to Imam Abu Robertson’s case is a Notice of Intent To Use Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Information (FISA). The U.S. Government’s intention to use its FISA powers signals probable cause to charge Imam “Taubah” Robertson “the target of such search is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power”. The facts presented in these filed charges leads this reporter to suspect an element of foreign intrigue may be...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Terry Waite, back in Lebanon for the first time since he was freed from years of captivity at the hands of Islamic militants, says he would gladly meet his erstwhile kidnappers. "I wouldn't mind meeting with them at all," the former Church of England envoy said on arrival at Beirut airport. "I'm sure that they have changed, that they have grown and developed, just as much as I have." Waite, who had helped free Western hostages held by extremists in Libya, Iran and Lebanon, came to Lebanon in 1987 to negotiate more releases. Accused of being a...

French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday urged the global community to help defuse a crisis in Mali by giving United Nations backing to a West African-led military intervention. Hollande, making his first speech to the UN General Assembly, said Mali needs help to seize back territory from Islamist rebels, who captured the north and east of the country after a coup created a power vacuum in March. France has offered to supply logistical support for any military force, in what is a delicate situation for the former colonial power, with six French hostages held in the area by AQIM. The...

The son of Omar Abdel Rahman, a Jama’a al-Islamiya leader known as the “Blind Sheikh” who was convicted of terrorism charges in the US in 1995, threatened to organize a protest at the US Embassy in Cairo and detain the employees inside. Abdallah Abdel Rahman’s threat came during a press conference organized by the sheikh’s family near the highly fortified American embassy compound on Thursday evening. Abdel Rahman demanded that President Mohamed Morsy intervene for the release of his father as he did in the case of Egyptian journalist Shaimaa Adel who was detained for nearly two weeks for covering...

SNIPPET: "Two Kenyan aid workers and a Somali doctor were kidnapped in lawless northern Somalia on Wednesday, probably by pirates, police said. The kidnapping occurred near the city of Galkayo, which straddles the border separating the semi-autonomous state of Puntland and the separate region of Galmudug to the south." SNIPPET: "A second Galkayo police official, Mohammed Ise Hassan, said the kidnapping took place on Wednesday afternoon near the village of Baadweyn, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of the city. Hassan said a driver and two police escorts were also wounded during the incident. Several employees from aid agencies and...

Colombia's main rebel group freed what it says were its last 10 military and police captives, a goodwill gesture that President Juan Manuel Santos praised but called insufficient to merit a peace dialogue.

At least one dead and three wounded after gunman reportedly opens fire in Beaumont courthouse, while suspect now believed to be holding hostages. More headlines from FoxNews.com: http://email.foxnews.com/t?ctl=1D4B1:0DBDA5A47DC7658469E0706BCB13099D&

ROME (Reuters) - A diplomatic row broke out between London and Rome on Friday over Britain's failure to inform the Italian government before launching a botched hostage rescue mission in Nigeria. The raid resulted in the deaths of a Briton and an Italian held hostage by a militant Islamist group. Chris McManus and Italian Franco Lamolinara had been kidnapped last May while working for a construction company in northwest Nigeria.

A Briton and Italian held hostage for 10 months in northern Nigeria died Thursday, apparently killed by their captors before they could be rescued, the British prime minister said. Nigerian security forces, with support from Britain, launched an operation Thursday to free British citizen Chris McManus and Italian national Franco Lamolinara, Prime Minister David Cameron said. But the effort did not succeed.

In a newly released audio message, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri claims that his organization is holding hostage Warren Weinstein, a 70-year-old American who went missing last August in Pakistan. Zawahiri's statement is the first official claim of responsibility by any group in relation to the kidnapping, and a U.S. official said the statement buttressed earlier "indications" that al Qaeda might be holding the American. "I tell the captive soldiers of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and our female prisoners held in the prisons of the crusaders and their collaborators, we have not forgotten you and in order to free...

Mideast: As the president sneaks more money in the budget for Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood thugs he helped install in Cairo show their gratitude by threatening to attack Israel. For three decades, the U.S. essentially paid Egypt not to attack our closest ally in the region. The policy worked to maintain peace. But Obama nullified that deal by backing Islamist revolutionaries against reliably pro-U.S. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Now the bribe has lost its effect. The new Egyptian leadership, led by the virulently anti-Jewish Muslim Brotherhood, this week issued a warning to Washington that it should understand that "what was...