Police: Man threw woman on subway tracks in Philly

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A man has been arrested on charges he grabbed a woman by the feet and threw her onto the tracks at a Philadelphia subway station, police said. The woman got off the tracks on her own and suffered only minor injuries.

Police announced the arrest Thursday, more than two days after the woman was assaulted around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at a subway station in the city's Chinatown neighborhood. The victim had been sitting on a bench when the man asked her what time the train was coming and requested a light for his cigarette, according to investigators. After she obliged and put the lighter back in her coat pocket, police said, the man grabbed her by the neck and began punching her.

In the assault, which was caught on surveillance video, the man can be seen grabbing the victim by her feet, dragging her along the platform and then throwing her on the tracks as she screamed. The suspect walked away with her cellphone, police said, but the woman was able to get back up onto the platform with only bruises and cuts.

Investigators with the city's police department and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority said they didn't release information about the attack until Thursday because they had identified the suspect by his distinctive jacket, which has one red sleeve, one aqua sleeve and aTrump Taj Mahal Casino Resorts logo on it, and didn't want to compromise the investigation by giving a description.

"They didn't want him to take that jacket off," SEPTA spokeswoman Heather Redfern said Friday.

Philadelphia police identified the suspect as William Clark, 37, of Philadelphia; he faces charges of aggravated assault, theft and related counts.

Clark was arrested around 2:30 p.m. Thursday at a plaza near City Hall, authorities said, and officers identified him because he was wearing the same jacket. He resisted but was arrested and the victim's cellphone was recovered, police said.

Investigators said haven't determined a possible motive, but authorities believe Clark may have mental health issues. It wasn't immediately known if he had an attorney.

French encircle key Malian town of Diabaly

A Malian soldier stands guard in front of a strategic bridge in Markala, approximately 40 km outside Segou on the road to Diabaly, in central Mali, Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013. Fighting raged in one Mali town, airstrikes hit another and army troops raced to protect a third, on Thursday, the seventh day of the French-led military intervention to wrest back Mali's north from al Qaida-linked groups. (AP Photo/Harouna Traore)

French troops arrive at Bamako's airport Thursday Jan. 17, 2013. Over 600 soldiers arrived Thursday. Fighting raged in one Mali town, airstrikes hit another and army troops raced to protect a third, on the seventh day of the French-led military intervention to wrest back Mali's north from al Qaida-linked groups. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — French troops encircled a key Malian town on Friday to stop radical Islamists from striking closer to the capital, a French official said.

The move to surround Diabaly came as French and Malian authorities said they had retaken Konna, the central city whose capture prompted the French military intervention last week.

The United Nations warned that some 700,000 civilians could be displaced by the fighting in Mali, where the French-led international force is fighting to oust the rebels from power in the north.

The French forces moved around Diabaly to cut off supplies to the Islamist extremists, who have held the town since Monday, said a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to discuss sensitive security matters.

The Malian military chased the Islamists from Konna and are now holding the town, a Malian military official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, said Friday.

Telephone lines were cut off in the town, making it difficult to independently verify the claim though the French official also confirmed the rebels no longer hold Konna.

Doctors Without Borders has been trying to get to Konna since Monday but all roads leading to the community in central Mali have been closed by the Malian military, said Malik Allaouna, director of operations for the group known as MSF for its initials in French.

"Despite our repeated requests, we are still being refused access to the Konna region," he said. "It is essential to allow the delivery of neutral and impartial medical and humanitarian aid in the areas affected by the conflict."

In Geneva, United Nations refugee agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said that the number of displaced Malians is expected to increase dramatically in the coming months.

Those who have fled "mentioned that large amounts of money are being offered to civilians to fight against the Malian army and its supporters," she said.

Meanwhile, authorities in the town of Niono said that a key road leading to Segou was being closed to traffic Friday between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m.

Segou is one of the largest towns in Mali and the administrative capital of its central region. The road closure is an attempt to keep Islamists from entering towns further south, officials said.

The prefect, or district administrator, of Niono Seydou Traore said "neither cars, nor motorcycles, nor people on foot will be able to travel, as a security measure."

France has encountered fierce resistance from the extremist groups, whose tentacles extend not only over a territory the size of Afghanistan in Mali, but also another 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) to the northeast in Algeria, where fighters stormed a BP-operated plant and took dozens of foreigners hostages, including Americans.

They demanded the immediate end of the hostilities in Mali, with one commander, Oumar Ould Hamaha, saying that they are now "globalizing the conflict" in revenge for the military assault on Malian soil.

On Thursday, France increased its troop strength in Mali to 1,400, said French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

West African neighbors also have begun sending troops to aid the French-led mission, with some Togolese and Nigerian forces arriving Thursday.

Nigeria has offered another 900 soldiers, while Chad has said it will send 2,000 to aid the mission.

A former French colony, Mali once enjoyed a reputation as one of West Africa's most stable democracies with the majority of its 15.8 million people practicing a moderate form of Islam. That changed last March, following a coup in the capital which created the disarray that allowed Islamist extremists to take over the main cities in the distant north.

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Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Paris; Rukmini Callimachi in Bamako, Mali; and John Heilprin in Geneva contributed to this report.

Desert siege: 100 of 132 foreign hostages freed

Unidentified rescued hostages pose for the media in Ain Amenas, Algeria, in this image taken from television Friday Jan. 18, 2013. Algeria’s state news service says nearly 100 out of 132 foreign hostages have been freed from a gas plant where Islamist militants had held them captive for three days. The APS news agency report was an unexpected indication of both more hostages than had previously been reported and a potentially breakthrough development in what has been a bloody siege. (AP Photo/Canal Algerie via Associated Press TV) ** TV OUT ALGERIA OUT **

An unidentified rescued hostage receives treatment in a hospital in Ain Amenas, Algeria, in this image taken from television Friday Jan. 18, 2013. Algeria’s state news service says nearly 100 out of 132 foreign hostages have been freed from a gas plant where Islamist militants had held them captive for three days. The APS news agency report was an unexpected indication of both more hostages than had previously been reported and a potentially breakthrough development in what has been a bloody siege. (AP Photo/Canal Algerie via Associated Press TV) ** TV OUT ALGERIA OUT **

AIN AMENAS, Algeria (AP) — The bloody three-day hostage standoff at a natural gas plant in the Sahara took a dramatic turn Friday as Algeria's state news service reported that nearly 100 of the 132 foreign workers kidnapped by Islamic militants had been freed.

That number of hostages at the remote desert facility was significantly higher than any previous report, but it still left questions about the fate of over 30 other foreign energy workers. It wasn't clear how the government arrived at the latest tally of hostages, which was far higher than the 41 foreigners the militants had claimed previously.

Yet the report that nearly 100 workers were safe could indicate a breakthrough in the confrontation that began when the militants seized the plant early Wednesday.

The militants, meanwhile, offered to trade two captive American workers for two terror figures jailed in the United States, according to a statement received by a Mauritanian news site that often reports news from North African extremists.

The U.S. State Department confirmed that some Americans are still being held hostage in Algeria. Asked about a militant offer to trade two American hostages for jailed terror figures in the United States, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, "The United States does not negotiate with terrorists."

The Friday report from the Algerian government news agency APS, citing a security official, did not mention any casualties in the battles between Algerian forces and the militants. But earlier it had said that 18 militants had been killed, along with six hostages — two in the initial attack Wednesday and four on Thursday.

It was not clear whether the remaining foreigners were still captive or had died during the Algerian military offensive to free them that began Thursday.

The desert siege erupted Wednesday when the militants attempted to hijack two buses at the plant, were repulsed, and then seized the sprawling refinery, which is 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) south of Algiers. They had claimed the attack came in retaliation for France's recent military intervention against Islamist rebels in neighboring Mali, but security experts have said it must have taken weeks of planning to hit the remote site.

Since then, Algeria's government has kept a tight grip on information about the siege.

The militants had seized hundreds of workers from 10 nations at Algeria's remote Ain Amenas natural gas plant. The overwhelming majority were Algerian and were freed almost immediately.

Algerian forces retaliated Thursday by storming the plant in an attempted rescue operation that left leaders around the world expressing strong concerns about the hostages' safety.

Militants claimed 35 hostages died on Thursday when Algerian military helicopters opened fire as the Islamists transported the hostages around the gas plant.

On Friday, trapped in the main refinery area, the militants offered to trade two American hostages for two prominent terror figures jailed in the United States. Those the militants sought included Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh who was convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks and considered the spiritual leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

But U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said there would be "no place to hide" for anyone who looks to attack the United States.

"Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere," Panetta said Friday.

Workers kidnapped by the militants came from around the world — Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians.

World leaders have expressed strong concerns in the past few days about how Algeria was handing the situation and its apparent reluctance to communicate.

Terrorized hostages from Ireland and Norway trickled out of the Ain Amenas plant, 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) south of Algiers, the capital. BP, which jointly operates the plant, said it had begun to evacuate employees from Algeria.

"This is a large and complex site and they are still pursuing terrorists and possibly some of the hostages," British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday in London.

He told British lawmakers the situation remained fluid and dangerous, saying "part of the threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, a threat still remains in another part."

A U.S. military C-130 transport plane flew a number of people including former Ain Amenas hostages from the Algerian capital of Algiers to a U.S. facility in Europe, a U.S. official said. He declined to be specific about the destination, their nationalities or the extent of the wounds that he said some had.

A flood of foreign energy workers were being evacuated from the North African nation amid security concerns.

BP evacuated one U.S. citizen along with other foreign energy workers from Algeria to Mallorca and then London. The oil giant said three flights left Algeria on Thursday, carrying 11 BP employees and several hundred energy workers from other companies.

A fourth plane was taking more people out of the country on Friday, BP said.

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Schemm reported from Rabat, Morocco. Associated Press writers Karim Kebir in Algiers, Lolita Baldor, Eileen Sullivan and Robert Burns in Washington, Lori Hinnant in Paris, and Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed to this report.

Mali army retakes town, Islamists flee French air raids

BAMAKO/MARKALA, Mali (Reuters) - Islamist rebels in Mali abandoned the central town of Diabaly on Friday after fleeing a French air strike, military sources said, while West African troops arrived in Bamako to take on the insurgents in Mali's north.

France, warning that Islamist control over Mali's vast deserts and rugged mountains threatened the security of Africa and the West, had targeted Diabaly in an eighth day of air strikes to dislodge hardened al Qaeda-linked fighters there.

"They (the Islamists) fled the town, dressed as civilians, early this morning. They abandoned their weapons and ammunition," a Malian military source said.

The source said government soldiers had not yet entered the town but Diabaly Mayor Oumar Diakite told Reuters that troops were there carrying out mopping-up operations after a French air strike earlier in the day.

Diakite said residents had dug up some of the Islamist fighters' weapons caches. "There are lots of burned-out vehicles that the Islamists tried to hide in the orchards," he added.

A commander in the Malian army in nearby Markala said ground forces were operating around Diabaly, which lies about 360 km (220 miles) northeast of Bamako, but could not confirm that the town, seized by Islamists on Monday, had been recaptured.

French armed forces spokesman Thierry Burkhard said he was not aware of any operation in the area.

If officially confirmed, it would be a second military success for the French-led military alliance after Islamists on Thursday night abandoned Konna, to the north of the central garrison town of Sevare.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has appealed for access to Konna but said it has so far been refused despite days of talks with all armed forces.

Bolstered with weapons seized from Libya after the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi, the Islamist alliance of al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and home-grown Malian groups Ansar Dine and MUJWA has put up staunch resistance.

The progress of French and Malian troops has been slowed also because insurgents had taken refuge in the homes of civilians, residents said.

The military operation is expected to force hundreds of thousands more people from their homes, on top of the 400,000 that have fled since a rebellion erupted last year.

French President Francois Hollande ordered the intervention on the grounds that the Islamists could turn northern Mali into a "terrorist state" radiating threats beyond its borders.

Residents in Markala, where the French have set up the forward base at an army camp overlooking the Niger River, said they were relieved to see French soldiers.

"The past few days have been very stressful before the arrival of the French troops," said Mohamud Sangare, who runs a hardware store in the center of the town.

Despite threats from militants to attack French interests around the world, France, which now has 1,800 troops on the ground in Mali, has pledged to keep them there until stability returns to the poor, landlocked West African nation

In the first apparent retaliatory attack, al Qaeda-associated militants took dozens of foreigners hostage on Wednesday at a natural gas plant in Algeria, blaming Algerian cooperation with France.

Algerian security sources said that about 20 foreigners were still being held on Friday at the facility where some 30 hostages, along with at least 18 of their captors, were killed during a storming of the complex by Algerian armed forces on Thursday.

ECOWAS TROOPS POUR IN

A total of 2,500 French troops are expected in Mali but Paris is keen to swiftly hand the mission over to West Africa's ECOWAS bloc, which in December secured a U.N. mandate for a 3,300-strong mission to help Mali recapture its north.

The first contingents of Togolese and Nigerian troops arrived in Bamako on Thursday. Nigerien and Chadian forces were massing in Niger, Mali's neighbor to the east.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, in a letter to the Senate requesting approval to raise Nigerian's force to 1,200 soldiers, said Mali was a threat to the whole of the region.

"The crisis in Mali, if not brought under control, may spill over to Nigeria and other West African countries with negative consequences on our collective security, political stability and development efforts," he said. His request was approved.

The scrambling of the U.N.-mandated African mission, which previously had not been due to deploy until September, will hearten former colonial power France. With Chad promising 2,000 soldiers, African states have now pledged more than 5,000.

The head of Malian military operations, Colonel Didier Daco, said that Islamists were abandoning their 4x4 pick-up trucks, which made them vulnerable in the desert to French air strikes, to fight in the bush on foot.

Military experts say France and its African allies must now capitalize on a week of hard-hitting air strikes by seizing the initiative on the ground to prevent the insurgents from withdrawing into the remote desert and reorganizing.

"The more painful the militants can make the push into northern Mali and subsequent pacification effort, the more they can hope to turn French, Western and African public opinion against the intervention in the country," global intelligence consultancy Stratfor wrote in a report on Friday.

MALIANS WELCOME FRENCH FORCES

With African states facing huge logistical and transport challenges, Germany promised two Transall military transport aircraft to help fly in their soldiers.

Britain has supplied two C-17 military transport planes to ferry in French armored vehicles and medical supplies. Spain's government said it would provide a Hercules transport plane and dozens of instructors to help the Mali operation.

The United States is considering logistical and surveillance support but has ruled out dispatching U.S. troops.

Reuters journalists travelling north of Bamako saw residents welcoming French troops and, in places, French and Malian flags hung side by side. "Thank you France, thank you Francois Hollande," read one national newspaper headline on Friday.

"They will do it. We're confident that they will do it well," said Bamako resident Omar Kamasoko. "They came a bit late, it's true, but they came. We're grateful and we're behind him."

Mali's recent woes began with a coup in Bamako last March after two decades of stable democracy. In the ensuing chaos, Islamist forces seized large swathes of the north and imposed a severe rule reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban.

The U.N. refugee agency said on Friday that refugees from northern Mali had given horrific accounts of amputations and executions, as well as the recruitment of child soldiers.

The agency said it expected 400,000 Malians to flee the fighting in coming months, placing great strain on the scant resources of the arid, impoverished Sahel region.

(Additional reporting by Adama Diarra in Bamako, Benkoro Sangare in Niono, Noel Tadegnon in Lome, Leigh Thomas in Paris, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and David Lewis in Dakar; Writing by Daniel Flynn and David Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Dallas woman guilty in stepson's dehydration death

This undated booking photo provided by the Dallas County Sheriff Department shows Tina Marie Alberson, 44. Alberson and her husband, Michael Ray James, 43, are charged in the July 2011 dehydration death of James' 10-year-old son, Jonathan James. Alberson, who is on trial this week, faces up to life in prison if convicted. (AP Photo/Dallas County Sheriff Department)

DALLAS (AP) — A Dallas woman was convicted Friday in the dehydration death of her 10-year-old stepson who was denied water for days during record-high temperatures in North Texas.

Jurors deliberated more than two hours before finding Tina Marie Alberson, 44, guilty of reckless injury to a child, a second-degree felony, in the July 2011 death of Jonathan James. Alberson faces up to life in prison because of a previous felony conviction.

Testimony in the punishment phase of her trial began Friday afternoon, but jurors went home after deliberating for about an hour without reaching a decision about her sentence. The jury will resume deliberations Tuesday.

Police thought Jonathan's death was heat-related until the medical examiner's report.

Alberson had testified in her own defense. She told jurors she limited Jonathan's water intake only a few times as punishment for misbehaving, and that she saw him drinking water when he wasn't in "time-out." She said she saw no sign that he was in medical distress.

The boy's fraternal twin brother, now 12, testified that Jonathan repeatedly asked for water and even pretended to use the bathroom in order to sneak a drink from the faucet before their stepmother ordered him out. Joseph James told jurors he was concerned for his brother's health but was too afraid of Alberson to do anything.

After her stepson died, Alberson was charged with injury to a child with serious bodily injury, a first-degree felony in which someone knowingly or recklessly causes harm that creates a substantial risk of death. It carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The lesser charge for which she was convicted carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, but jurors can sentence Alberson to a maximum of life in prison because she previously was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, hitting someone with her van in 1998.

During the sentencing phase, the twins' maternal grandmother, Sue Shotwell, testified that the boys didn't want to go to Alberson's house and that Jonathan couldn't understand why he was always in trouble with his stepmother.

Prosecutors said Alberson should spend the rest of her life behind bars, but defense attorneys asked jurors for the minimum sentence, five years.

The boy's father, Michael Ray James, 43, is set for trial next month.