Algerian Prime Minister Says at Least 37 Foreigners Dead in Siege

Anis Belghoul/Associated Press

Algerian Army vehicles on Sunday near a remote town in southeastern Algeria where hostages were taken in a four-day ordeal.

ALGIERS — In his first official tally of the deadly scope of Algerian hostage crisis, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said Monday that the known death toll among the foreign captives had risen steeply from 23 to 37, and that five additional foreigners remained unaccounted for.

In a televised news conference, Mr. Sellal also said that 29 militants were killed and that three were captured alive during the four-day ordeal that terrorized a remote Algerian gas field refining site. Two of the attackers were Canadian, he contended.

Algerian officials had been forecasting that the tally of foreign dead would rise from a preliminary estimate of 23, a concern that was reinforced by reports that a significant number of hostages from Japan and the Philippines had been killed at the site. On Monday, the Algerian prime minister said the dead came from eight different nations, without specifying which ones. He also said that one Algerian hostage had been killed as well.

Mr. Sellal was more specific about the attackers, telling the news conference that they had come from Egypt, Canada, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Tunisia, although it was unclear how he knew for sure. Algerian officials have been saying that few if any of the attackers were believed to have been Algerian.

The prime minister asserted that the attackers had started out in northern Mali — a claim made by the attackers themselves, which had initially been dismissed by the Algerian authorities as far-fetched because the Mali border is hundreds of miles away.

But the prime minister added that the attackers had ultimately crossed into Algeria through its eastern border with Libya, which is much closer to the refining site. If true, it would serve as a powerful a reminder of Libya’s instability since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi more than a year ago, and of the enormous distances that complicate the monitoring of national boundaries in the vast Sahara.

“We would need two NATOs to monitor our borders,” Mr. Sellal said.

He corroborated assertions made by other Algerian officials and accounts from freed hostages that the militants had intended to destroy the gas complex and had booby-trapped some hostages with explosives.

In all, the prime minister said, 790 workers were on the site, including 134 foreigners of 26 nationalities, when it was first seized by a heavily armed militant band in one of the most brazen assaults in years.

The prime minister’s news conference represented the most detailed Algerian tally of casualties in the days of alternating standoff and confrontation that began early on Wednesday as the raiders swept in from the desert to take over the internationally managed gas plant, hundreds of miles from Algiers.

Earlier Monday, the Philippines Foreign Affairs Department announced casualties among its citizens for the first time, saying 6 Filipino hostages had been killed and four were still missing.

Additionally, citing an unidentified government source, Reuters said Algeria had informed Japan that 9 of its citizens had died — if corroborated, the highest death toll by a nation reported so far — while previous Japanese accounts had spoken of 10 unaccounted for. Officials in Tokyo declined to confirm those figures but news reports quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as saying that 7 Japanese captives died and that three were still unaccounted for.

Japan’s NHK television interviewed an unnamed Algerian worker who escaped the gas plant. He said that not long after sporadic firing started, militants appeared, armed with machine guns, antitank rockets and antiaircraft missiles. He said the attackers were kind to Algerian staff members, who were given food and blankets. Their targets were the foreign workers, who were rounded up.

The first ones he saw killed were two Japanese and a Filipino, gunned down before his eyes. He said the militants made the foreign hostages wear bombs strapped onto their bodies. He fled during the army attack, and did not know if those foreigners had survived.

The standoff between several dozen radical Islamists and Algerian security services came to a bloody conclusion on Saturday when the Algerians assaulted the kidnappers’ last redoubt at the facility, where hundreds of Algerian and scores of expatriate workers were employed.

The victims — from the United States, Britain, France, Japan and other countries — were killed after hours of harrowing captivity. An unknown number of the hostages died in the assault on Saturday; Algerian officials said they also killed most of the remaining hostage takers, who they said were followers of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a warlord linked to Al Qaeda based in northern Mali. A regional Web site reported that he had issued a video claiming responsibility for the attack.

Adam Nossiter reported from Algiers, and Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare from Paris, Alan Cowell and Stanley Reed from London, Floyd Whaley from Manila, Martin Fackler from Tokyo, Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon from Washington, and Michael Schwirtz from New York.

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Harbaugh brothers take 49ers, Ravens to Super Bowl

This Super Bowl will be filled with firsts — and one significant last.

The Harbaughs, San Francisco's Jim and Baltimore's John, will be the first pair of brothers to coach against each other in the NFL title game.

Quarterbacks Colin Kaepernick of the 49ers and Joe Flacco of the Ravens each will be playing in his first Super Bowl — where success is the ultimate measure of elite QBs.

It'll be Baltimore's first crack at a championship in a dozen years, San Francisco's first in 18. They are a combined 6-0 in Super Bowls (the 49ers own five of those victories), so one club will lose the big game for the first time.

And middle linebacker Ray Lewis, Baltimore's emotional leader and top tackler, will be playing in the final game of his 17-year career before heading into retirement.

"This is our time," Lewis pronounced.

For all of those story lines, none is expected to command as much attention as Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh. The game in New Orleans on Feb. 3 was quickly given all manner of nicknames: The Brother Bowl. The Harbaugh Bowl. The Har-Bowl. The Super-Baugh.

The Harbaughs' sister, Joani Crean, wrote in a text to The Associated Press: "Overwhelmed with pride for John, Jim and their families! They deserve all that has come their way! Team Harbaugh!"

As John prepared to coach the Ravens in the AFC championship game Sunday night, he watched on the stadium's big video screen as Jim's 49ers wrapped up the NFC championship.

John looked into a nearby TV camera, smiled broadly and said: "Hey, Jim, congratulations. You did it. You're a great coach. Love you."

Less than four hours later, the Ravens won, too. Some siblings try to beat each other in backyard games. These guys will do it in the biggest game of all.

Who's a parent to cheer for?

During the 2011 regular season, the Harbaughs became the only brothers to coach against each other in any NFL game (the Ravens beat the 49ers 16-6 on Thanksgiving Day that year).

The NFC West champion 49ers (13-4-1) opened as 5-point favorites, seeking a record-tying sixth Super Bowl title to add to those won by Hall of Fame quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young.

Lewis was the MVP when the AFC North champion Ravens (13-6) beat the New York Giants in 2001.

With Kaepernick's terrific passing — he was 16 of 21 for 233 yards and a touchdown in only his ninth career NFL start — and two TD runs by Frank Gore, San Francisco erased a 17-point deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons 28-24 Sunday.

Baltimore then fashioned a comeback of its own, scoring the last 21 points to defeat the New England Patriots 28-13, thanks in large part to Flacco's three second-half touchdown tosses, two to Anquan Boldin. Lewis and the rest of Baltimore's defense limited the high-scoring Patriots to one touchdown.

In the often risk-averse NFL, each Harbaugh made a critical change late in the regular season in a bid to boost his team's postseason chances. Clearly, both moves worked.

After 49ers quarterback Alex Smith, the starter in last season's overtime NFC title game loss to the Giants, got a concussion, Jim switched to Kaepernick for Week 11 — and never switched back. Now San Francisco has its first three-game winning streak of the season, at precisely the right time.

Baltimore, meanwhile, was in the midst of a three-game losing streak when John fired offensive coordinator Cam Cameron and promoted quarterbacks coach Jim Caldwell to replace him.

The 50-year-old John is 15 months older than Jim and generally the less demonstrative of the pair, although John certainly did not lack intensity while making his case with officials a couple of times Sunday.

The ever-excitable Jim — who was treated for an irregular heartbeat in November — was up to his usual sideline antics in Atlanta.

He spun around and sent his headset flying when the original call stood after he threw his red challenge flag on a catch by the Falcons. He hopped and yelled at his defense to get off the field after their key fourth-down stop with less than 1½ minutes left. He made an emphatic-as-can-be timeout signal with 13 seconds remaining.

Expect CBS to fill plenty of time during its Super Bowl broadcast with shots of Jim, that trademark red pen dangling in front of his chest, and John, who usually wears a black Ravens hat. That is sure to be a focal point, right up until they meet for a postgame handshake in two weeks' time.

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AP Sports Writer Janie McCauley in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Recipes for Health: Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

If you did a lot of cooking over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays you may have some celery hearts lingering in your refrigerator. You needed a few branches for a stew, a stock, or a soup, so you bought a whole bunch, and here it is weeks later and the rest of the celery is wilting in the produce drawer.

This doesn’t have to happen if you think of this vegetable as something more than an aromatic. I’m a big fan of celery, both raw and cooked, as the main ingredient or as one of several featured ingredients in a dish. You can do the traditional thing with raw celery and dice it up and add it to a potato, tuna or egg salad, or you can make a celery salad, slicing the branches as thin as you can get them and tossing them with herbs, radishes, oil and vinegar, and blue cheese. If you are cooking with celery, don’t stop at one branch when you make soup. The celery contributes a wonderful herbal flavor dimension. It retains its texture for a long time when you cook it, so I used it as the main vegetable in a risotto and loved the way it stood up to the creamy rice.

You always see celery listed as an ingredient in tonic juices and blender drinks. It has long been used in Chinese medicine to help control high blood pressure, which makes sense because it contains phytochemicals called phthalides that reduce stress hormones and work to relax the muscle walls in arteries, increasing blood flow. The vegetable is an excellent source of Vitamins K and C, and a very good source of potassium, folate, dietary fiber, molybdenum, manganese, and Vitamin B6. Another bonus attribute – it is very low in calories. However, it is on the high side as far as sodium goes.

Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

I make minestrones like this all the time, but I hadn’t made a version with this much celery in it until I made this one, and I loved the dimension of flavor it contributes to the mix.

1 cup lentils, rinsed

1 onion, halved

A bouquet garni made with 2 sprigs each thyme and parsley, a bay leaf, and a Parmesan rind

1 1/2 quarts water

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 medium carrot, diced

3 celery stalks, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste

1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with liquid

Pinch of sugar

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Very thinly sliced celery, from the inner heart, for garnish

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for serving

1. Combine the lentils, 1/2 onion and the bouquet garni with 1 quart water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, add salt to taste, cover and simmer 30 minutes.

2. Chop the remaining onion. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat and add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is tender, about 5 minutes, and add the garlic and a pinch of salt. Stir together until fragrant, about 1 minute, and add the canned tomatoes with their liquid and the sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until the tomatoes have cooked down somewhat and smell fragrant.

3. Add the lentils with their broth, the tomato paste, salt to taste, an additional 2 cups water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings. Season to taste with freshly ground pepper, stir in the parsley and serve, garnishing each bowl with thinly sliced celery heart if you want some crunch, and passing the Parmesan at the table.

Yield: Serves 4 to 6 (4 if there are teen-agers in your house)

Advance preparation: This will keep for three or four days in the refrigerator. It may require thinning out. It’s even better the day after you make it. I have a teenage son and he just about polished off the leftovers – which should have served 3 – the day after I tested the recipe.

Variation: Shortly before serving add 2 cups baby spinach and simmer just until wilted.

Nutritional information per serving (4 servings): 276 calories; 4 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 49 grams carbohydrates; 12 grams dietary fiber; 392 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 17 grams protein

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 184 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 32 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 11 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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DealBook: In Euro Zone, Signs of Progress and Fears of Complacency

PARIS – This may be the year that Europe stops being the ticking time bomb of the global economy.

Ireland is on track to leave international bailout limbo by summer. Talk of Greece leaving the euro is off the table. And financial speculators have generally stopped betting the euro zone will blow up.

But even as the sense of emergency fades, Europe is potentially facing a starker problem.

For three years, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and a phalanx of policy makers have been working to shore up the euro’s foundations to prevent the currency union from unraveling. As they gather with academics, executives and various experts this week at the World Economic Forum, which opens Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, the biggest concern is that leaders might become less vigilant now that the heat is off, ushering in a raft of new troubles that could dog the euro for years to come.

“The risk is that complacency takes hold because there is no more urgency in the crisis, and that everything that has been done up until now will be deemed sufficient,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. If that happens, he warned, “Europe will turn into the next Japan, and become a permanently depressed or stagnating economic area.”

Ms. Merkel might be forgiven for feeling a sense of vindication. Her deliberate approach to crisis management and refusal to get too far ahead of German public opinion has often frustrated her euro zone peers and foreign allies. And yet, the strategy seems to have worked — so far, at least. Ms. Merkel, who is to speak at Davos on Thursday, and other European leaders have generally done just enough to contain the crisis without alienating taxpayers.

Much of the credit for the current calm in Europe goes to Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank. He appeased financial markets with his promise last summer to do whatever it took to preserve the euro, including buying the government bonds of Spain if necessary to keep a lid on the country’s borrowing costs.

The effect of Mr. Draghi’s promise has been evident: financial markets have stopped driving the borrowing costs of Spain and Italy toward the danger levels that led Ireland, Greece and Portugal to reach for international financial lifelines. Today, few people fear that Europe’s southern countries will break away from the euro union.

Other dire prospects, like Germany and other Northern European countries fleeing the euro union to avoid getting caught in a quagmire, have also dropped off the watch list. If anything, the focus of anxiety is the fiscal situation in the United States, where gridlock in Washington has become just as debilitating for the country’s finances as the euro policy paralysis was for European politicians.

“Some European policy makers who visited the United States recently were delighted to see that because of the fiscal cliff, Europe wasn’t on every channel,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University. “There is an ecstasy over the fact that they won’t blow apart tomorrow.”

Still, Mr. Rogoff added, Europe must revive economic growth to fully address its problems. “And even if they do, that’s not a long-term solution,” he said. “They need to integrate more fully, or they will fall apart.”

Europe’s political leaders have taken important steps to improve spending discipline among euro members, to provide a financial backstop for troubled euro zone countries and to consolidate supervision of banks. Despite many imperfections, the measures seem to have been enough to convince investors that officials are slowly constructing a more resilient currency union.

“European countries have shown their resolve in making the euro a success and reaffirmed the deep political commitment to work together toward a stronger union,” Vítor Constâncio, the vice president of the European Central Bank, told an audience in Beijing on Jan. 12.

But leaders have yet to address some serious flaws in the structure of the euro zone. For example, they have not solved the problem of how to wind down terminally ill banks without sticking taxpayers with the bill. And they are far away from a deposit insurance fund for Europe, which means the risk of bank runs remains.

“In order to define a turning point, you need a lot of factors besides the stabilization of financial markets,” Mr. Draghi said this month.

But coming events could undermine confidence. Germany will hold national elections in September, which could make Ms. Merkel even more cautious than usual and stall euro zone decision making. Already, her main rivals pulled off an upset in regional elections this weekend in Lower Saxony.

Italian elections are also looming. Mario Monti, the prime minister who has restored Italy’s international credibility and is to speak at Davos on Wednesday, faces a public that is grumpy about a rollback of job protections and other policy overhauls. Silvio Berlusconi, a former Italian prime minister who presided over years of economic standstill, is attempting a populist comeback.

In France, President François Hollande’s pledge to bring the deficit down to 3 percent of gross domestic product this year to adhere to the rules governing euro membership may be challenged if France’s military engagement in Mali and the surrounding region turns into a drawn-out affair.

Across the channel, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who is scheduled to speak at Davos on Thursday morning, has sounded warnings that the country might leave the European Union if changes in its administration are not made. “The danger is that Europe will fail and that the British people will drift toward the exit,” according to prepared text of a speech Mr. Cameron postponed delivering last week because of developments in the hostage crisis in Algeria.

In the meantime, the severe effects of prolonged austerity in several European countries are leaving deep social scars. Tax increases and steep spending cuts have ground many European citizens deeper than ever into hardship, prompting millions to demonstrate in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Recessionary economies in those countries are expected to get worse before they improve.

In Greece, where austerity has hit the hardest, people are burning trash and wood this winter for lack of money to pay electricity bills, and the government’s efforts to enact structural overhauls needed to turn the economy around and attract foreign investors continue to lag.

And then there is Germany, which itself is being tugged into a slowdown as its cash-poor southern neighbors continue to refrain from buying Audis and other high-priced German goods.

Unemployment in the euro zone continues to climb: the jobless rate in the 17 countries of the bloc hit a record 11.8 percent in November. Youth unemployment has surpassed 50 percent in Spain and Greece, a stratosphere of despair. Thousands of bright young people continue to flee Greece, Ireland, Spain and other countries every month for the booming economies of Australia and Canada.

Portuguese workers are even going to Africa in search of a better future, as the middle class there grows along with improving economic conditions on the southern part of the African continent.

Yet painful adjustments are starting to bear some fruit. Labor costs have come down in countries including Spain and Portugal, helping make their work forces more competitive within the region. In Spain, for instance, where unit labor costs have fallen 4 percent since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the labor market is now so alluring that Ford, Renault and Volkswagen have announced plans to expand production there.

In addition, the alarming flight of deposits from banks in Spain has come to a stop.

The euro zone’s problems have proven an opportunity for some countries to remove structural impediments to growth. In France, where Mr. Hollande has promised to make the economy more competitive, labor unions have agreed to a deal to overhaul swaths of the notoriously rigid labor market.

The deal would tame some of the French labor code’s most confounding restrictions, including lengthy hiring and firing procedures and outsize business taxes, as the country tries to lift its competitiveness, curb unemployment and improve the budget.

“Is the worst over? Probably yes,” analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a recent note to clients.

That will be especially true if leaders and businesses persist in using the crisis as a chance to renew European competitiveness.

While some countries may have made enough economic overhauls to enjoy substantial growth, once the crisis is past, said Nicolas Véron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels, “there are a lot of nuts still to crack.”

Jack Ewing reported from Frankfurt.

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IHT Rendezvous: China's 'Lamborghini' Coefficient: Who's Getting Richer and Who Poorer?

BEIJING — Search the word Gini, or “jini,” for Gini coefficient, the well-known measure of income inequality, on China’s biggest microblogging site and the first result today was for Lamborghini, the Italian luxury sports car (in Chinese, the two words share a similar sound in the last part of the car’s name.)

That is very ironic because the Gini coefficient measures income inequality and the Lamborghini, which can set a buyer back $300,000, is not an uncommon sight on the streets of big Chinese cities, an object of resentment among ordinary people who view it as a symbol of how a few people are amassing tremendous wealth as many struggle with low incomes, low bank deposit rates, high property prices and persistent inflation.

In other words, income inequality in China is politically sensitive.

(The Gini index is a measure of household income inequality; zero represents perfect income equality and one, perfect inequality, a situation where one person would own all the wealth, as the World Bank explains.)

So last Friday, when the government announced China’s Gini coefficient figures for the first time in over a decade, there was excitement – and quite a bit of scorn – expressed online and in media reports as well as private conversations. Why?

According to the figures, China today is actually more equal than in 2003, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

From 2003, the Gini coefficient did indeed rise, the bureau said, from 0.479 to a high in 2008 of 0.491. But by 2012 the figure had dropped to 0.474, meaning China is a more equal society today than a decade ago – despite all those Lamborghinis on the street.

At a news conference, Ma Jiantang, the bureau director, called the rate nevertheless “relatively high,” Xinhua reported. “China must accelerate its income distribution reform to narrow the rich-poor gap,” Xinhua said.

Yet the government’s “effective measures” to “bring benefits for its people” after the gobal financial crisis began in 2008 had brought down the measure, it quoted Mr. Ma as saying.

To compare with the United States: In 2011, the Gini coefficient there was also high, at 0.477, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Xinhua quoted the United Nations as putting the “warning level” on the rich-poor gap at 0.4.

Yet in China this weekend, few believed the new figures.

Here are two lively reactions from microblogs, from a journalist and an economist who together have over six million followers:

“Please choose one: 1. Really, thank you Fatherland; 2. That’s a myth; 3. Not sure, but hurry up and increase my salary,” Shi Shusi, a journalist and social commentator, the director of the state-run Worker’s Daily Weekly, said on his Sina Weibo account to nearly 875,000 followers.

Xu Xiaonian, a professor of finance and economics at the China Europe International Business School, wrote on his Weibo account (5.5 million followers): “A journalist rang to ask me to comment on today’s macroeconomic figures. I’d have to be crazy to truthfully comment on false figures. That Gini coefficient, to use the words of Zheng Yuanjie,” a popular children’s story writer, “‘no-one would even dare to write a fairytale like that.’”

A different report, in December, by researchers at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in the city of Chengdu, put China’s Gini at 0.61 for 2010.

While people are by and large glad to see the government once again measuring the figure after a decade-long hiatus (which Mr. Ma explained last year was due to the fact that the government did not actually know what people in the cities were earning, as I explored in a Letter from China,) a major problem facing the government is the scale of people’s “hidden income,” estimated by the Beijing-based economist Wang Xiaolu several years ago to be about 9.3 trillion renminbi (nearly $1.5 trillion).

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Djokovic holds off Wawrinka; Sharapova advances

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Novak Djokovic held off a valiant Swiss player for a 5-hour, five-set victory Sunday night, extending his winning streak to 18 matches at the Australian Open and then ripping off his shirt to celebrate.

The big surprise: It was a fourth-round match against Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland, not a final against Roger Federer.

Djokovic edged the 15th-seeded Wawrinka 1-6, 7-5, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 12-10 in a momentum-swinging marathon, cashing in on his third match point to reach the quarterfinals for a 15th consecutive major tournament.

The style was reminiscent of his 5-hour, 53-minute final win here last year against Rafael Nadal.

"He deserved equally to be a winner of this match," said Djokovic, who is aiming to be the first man in the Open era to win three consecutive Australian titles. "I give him a lot of credit. He has all my respect. He was the aggressive player on the court. I was just hanging in there trying to fight."

Djokovic had beaten Wawrinka — the perennial No. 2 among Swiss tennis players to 17-time major winner Federer — in their 10 previous matches. He hadn't lost a head-to-head since 2006 and had won 11 straight sets between them.

The win "brings back the memories from 12 months ago with Rafa," he said. "We are midway through the tournament but it feels like a final to me."

Djokovic next faces Tomas Berdych, the 2010 Wimbledon finalist who advanced with a 6-3, 6-2, 7-6 (13) win over South Africa's Kevin Anderson.

Wawrinka was cramping and needed massages on both legs in the fifth set. He was so tired he decided not to challenge a decision on a call that went against him — wrongly, according to TV replays.

But he didn't think it made a difference in the end.

"In five sets, five hours, you always have some opportunity to win a set or to win the match," he said. "If you don't take it, he's going to take it.

"It's by far my best match I ever play, especially in five sets against the No. 1 player ... full house. At the end I was really, really close. For sure I'm really sad. ... But I think there is more positive than negative."

Fourth-seeded David Ferrer won 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 over No. 16 Kei Nishikori of Japan to set up an all-Spanish quarterfinal against Nicolas Almagro, who was leading 6-2, 5-1 when No. 8 Janko Tipsaveric retired from their fourth-round match.

Maria Sharapova has had almost no trouble on the women's side, beating Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium 6-1, 6-0 earlier Sunday to continue a dominant and unparalleled run in Melbourne.

The late-finishing men's match almost changed the complexion of the tournament.

Critics who questioned if anybody could challenge Djokovic, Federer and U.S. Open champion Andy Murray in the absence of Nadal at this tournament got an answer quickly.

Wawrinka stunned the top-ranked Djokovic with three service breaks in the first set and led 5-2 in the second before the 25-year-old Serb rallied by winning six consecutive games. But just as Djokovic seemed to be taking control of the match, Wawrinka launched his own comeback to win a long tiebreaker and force a fifth set.

Djokovic got to serve first in the fifth, giving him a psychological edge as long as he held his serve. In the end, Wawrinka didn't quite have the big-time experience.

Wawrinka had game point in the 22nd game but let Djokovic get on a roll. He saved his first match point with a service winner, then saved another.

At 1:40 a.m. local time, Wawrinka was whacking his head with the racket and biting the ball after giving Djokovic another match point. Moments later, he was slumped on the court.

Djokovic raised both arms, walked to the net and embraced his beaten rival, then pulled of his shirt and flexed — shades of the 2012 final.

The second-ranked Sharapova has lost only five games in four matches on the way to the quarterfinals, an Australian Open record that seems immaterial to the 25-year-old Russian.

"Well, I'm certainly happy to be playing this well but ... it only gets tougher from here," said Sharapova, who is playing her first tournament of 2013 after withdrawing from a warm-up event at Brisbane because of an injured right collarbone.

Steffi Graf conceded only eight games in her opening four matches here in 1989, when she won the second of her three straight Australian Open titles. Monica Seles matched that mark.

Sharapova has been even more dominant. She started with a pair of 6-0, 6-0 wins — the first time that has happened at a major tournament since 1985 — and then beat seven-time Grand Slam winner Venus Williams 6-1, 6-3 in the third round.

Sharapova next plays fellow Russian Ekaterina Makarova, who ousted fifth-seeded Angelique Kerber 7-5, 6-4. Sharapova beat Makarova in the quarterfinals here last year before losing the final to Victoria Azarenka.

Li Na, who reached the final here in 2011 and won the French Open later that year, saved a set point in the tiebreaker before beating Julia Goerges 7-6 (6), 6-1. She'll next play No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska, who beat No. 13 Ana Ivanovic 6-2, 6-4 for her 13th consecutive win. Radwanska won the Auckland and Sydney titles before coming to Melbourne.

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richter’s house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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N.T.S.B. Rules Out a Cause for Battery Fire on 787 Dreamliner

Federal investigations said Sunday that they had ruled out excessive voltage as the cause of a battery fire on a Boeing 787 in Boston this month, widening the mystery into what led to the grounding of the world’s most technologically advanced jet after a second battery-related problem last week.

With investigators focused on the plane’s lithium-ion batteries, the National Transportation Safety Board said an examination of the data from the plane’s flight recorder indicated that the battery “did not exceed the designed voltage of 32 volts.” The fire aboard a Japan Airlines plane on Jan. 7 at Logan International Airport in Boston occurred after the passengers had gotten off.

Last week, a battery problem on another 787 forced an All Nippon Airways jetliner to make an emergency landing in Japan. That episode prompted aviation authorities around the world to ground the plane, also known as the Dreamliner. The Federal Aviation Administration said last week that it would not lift the ban until Boeing could show that the batteries were safe.

But with investigators on a global quest to find out what went wrong, the safety board’s statement suggested that there might not be a rapid resumption of 787 flights. The 787 first entered service in November 2011 after more than three and a half years of production delays. Eight airlines currently own 50 787s, including United Airlines.

On Friday, Japanese safety officials, who are in charge of investigating the second battery problem, suggested that overcharging a battery might have caused it to overheat. Pilots decided to make an emergency landing 20 minutes after takeoff after receiving several alarms about the battery and smelled smoke in the cockpit.

That investigation is conducted by Japan’s transportation safety board. American investigators are heplping with the inquiry.

The GS Yuasa Corporation of Japan, one of the world’s leading lithium-ion battery manufacturers, makes the batteries for the 787, and Thales, of France, makes the control systems for the battery. The battery is part of a complex electrical system that powers the 787. Like many other components and structures, Boeing outsourced much of the manufacturing to partners around the world.

The safety board typically conducts investigations through a process of elimination, and rules out possible causes along the way.

It said that the lithium-ion battery that powered the auxiliary power unit, a small jet engine used on the ground, had been examined in the safety board’s Materials Laboratory in Washington.

The battery was first X-rayed and put through a CT scan. Investigators then disassembled it into its eight individual cells for detailed examination and documentation. Three of the cells were selected for more detailed radiographic examination.

Investigators have also examined several other components that they removed from the airplane, including wire bundles and battery management circuit boards as well as the battery management unit, the controller for the auxiliary power unit, the battery charger and the power start unit.

On Tuesday, investigators will convene in Arizona to test and examine the battery charger and download nonvolatile memory from the auxiliary power unit controller. Several other components have been sent for download or examination to Boeing’s facility in Seattle and to the manufacturer in Japan.

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Algeria Begins ‘Final Assault’ on Gas Field; 7 Hostages Reported Killed

BAMAKO, Mali — The hostage crisis in the Algerian desert appeared to be reaching a bloody conclusion Saturday as the official Algerian news agency reported that the army had launched a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing 11 of them, but only after they had executed seven hostages.

“In principle, it’s all over,” a senior Algerian government official said from Algiers. The official said that security forces were “doing clean-up” to make sure some of the kidnappers were not hiding in the sprawling industrial complex.

Philip Hammond, the British defense secretary, said at a news conference in London that the Algerian military operation was over, but he called the loss of life since the start of the crisis “appalling and unacceptable.” United States Defense secretary Leon E. Panetta, who appeared with Mr. Hammond, said he did not yet have reliable information about the Americans at the facility, although the Algerian official said two had been found “safe and sound.”

The news agency report did not give the nationalities of those it said were executed, and it remained unclear if there were other hostages at the remote plant and whether they were alive. Earlier news reports said between 10 and dozens of hostages from several nations were in the hands of the kidnappers as of Friday.

United States officials said last week that “seven or eight” Americans had been at the In Amenas field when it was seized by the militants on Wednesday.

One American, Frederick Buttaccio, 58, of Katy, Tex., was confirmed dead on Friday, and the French government said one of its citizens, identified as Yann Desjeux, had also died before Saturday’s raid. The British government earlier said at least one Briton was killed, and an Algerian state news agency said 12 Algerians had died as of Friday.

The Algerian official insisted that no precise tally of the dead had yet been made, and that it would be difficult to establish one quickly. “There are corpses that are totally charred,” he said. “We’ve got to do identification work. It’s very difficult.” It was not immediately clear why the bodies were burned, although the Algerian press agency said the militants had set fire to part of the complex Friday night, which prompted the troops to launch their assault Saturday. Saturday’s assault on the attackers, if it swept up all the attackers, would bring to an end a four-day siege involving dozens of hostages and kidnappers that drew criticism from Western governments for the tough manner in which it was handled by the Algerian security services. Attacks on the kidnappers by the government forces have caused an unknown number of deaths among the hostages, in addition to those who were executed by the Al Qaeda-affiliated militants.

One Algerian who managed to escape told France 24 television late Friday night, that the kidnappers said “We’ve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is.” The haggard-looking Algerian, interviewed at the airport in Algiers, said the kidnappers then immediately executed five hostages. The militants who attacked the plant said it was in retaliation for French troops sweeping into Mali this month to stop an advance of Islamists south toward the capital.

The Algerian state oil company, Sonatrach, said Saturday that the attackers had evidently mined the facility with the intention of blowing it up and that the company was working to disable the mines.

Throughout the siege, precise information about the number of killed has been difficult to obtain from the remote site, with the government putting out varying figures.

The Algerians have rejected the criticism of its go-it-alone approach, toughest from the British and Japanese governments whose nationals were among those kidnapped, saying they have had years of experience dealing with terrorist attacks. The Algerian government has also denied launching an assault on the facility, saying troops were merely responding — on Thursday — to the militants’ attempts to leave the field with with hostages.

The government official acknowledged Saturday morning though that this week’s assault was of a scale and complexity the country had never experienced before.

“This was a multinational operation,” he said of the kidnappers. “These are not Algerians. They’ve come from all over, Tunisia, Egypt, Mauritania. It’s the first time we’ve handled something on this scale. This one is different, it’s of another dimension,” he said. Although some of the escaped hostages in recent days have said some of the militants were not from Algeria, it is not yet clear that none were, and the Algerian government and militants have previously said the mastermind was an Algerian who had broken away from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Nonetheless, the brazenness of the assault — dozens of Islamist fighters attacking one of the country’s most important gas-producing facilities — is likely to call into question Algeria’s much vaunted security strategy in dealing with the Islamic militants who shelter in its southern deserts, near the Mali border.

The Algerians have made a virtue out of keeping a lid on these militants, pushing them towards Mali in a strategy of modified containment, and ruthlessly stamping them out when they attempt an attack in the interior of the country. So far it has worked, and the country’s extensive oil and gas fields, an extremely important revenue source, have been protected.

That relative success had allowed Algeria to take a hands-off approach to the Islamist conquest of northern Mali in recent months, even while western governments have pleaded with it to become more directly involved in confronting the militants, who move across the hazy border between the two countries.

But now, with this week’s attack, Algeria may have to rethink its approach, analysts suggest, and engage in a more frontal strategy against the Islamists.

The senior government official appeared to acknowledge this in the interview Saturday, saying: “This has international implications. This is not just about us, it’s international.”

If the outcome represents a relative setback for Algeria, it could be viewed as a decided victory for Islamists who carried out the assault, who achieved several of their shared perennial goals: killing large numbers of westerners and disrupting states they have put on their enemies list — including Algeria.

Indeed, the militants said Friday they plan more attacks in Algeria, in a report carried on a Mauritanian news site that often carries their statements.

Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris and Elisabeth Bumiller from London. .

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the nationality of a government official who said security forces were searching the gas complex. The official was Algerian, not Turkish.

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Record 73 early entries for NFL draft

NEW YORK (AP) — A record 73 underclassmen, including six first-team All-Americans, have been approved for the NFL draft on Saturday.

That overall number of early entries is eight more than last year.

The six All-Americans are safety Matt Elam of Florida, tight end Zach Ertz of Stanford, tackle Luke Joeckel of Texas A&M, defensive end Bjoern Werner of Florida State, linebacker Jarvis Jones of Georgia and cornerback Dee Milliner of national champion Alabama.

Also approved former LSU cornerback-kick returner Tyrann Mathieu, a 2011 All-American who was kicked off the Tigers before last season.

The NFL draft will be April 25-27 in New York.

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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