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{{Friends and family of four French citizens kidnapped by al-Qaeda’s North African branch are marching Monday through the Parisian suburbs to the city centre to mark the third anniversary of the hostages’ capture.}}

Thierry Dol, Marc Féret, Daniel Larribe and Pierre Legrand were all working for French companies Areva and Vinci when they were seized at Arlit, Niger in September 2010.

The small but determined group of supporters set off early Monday morning on a symbolic 18-kilometre march into central Paris, where the hostages’ pictures are on display.

The walk has taken them to key points along the way, where the group left letters and petitions, and was due to end at 3 a.m. Tuesday – precisely the hour the militants abducted their hostages.

The group stopped first at headquarters of the companies that employed the men – Areva and Vinci – followed by various government institutions including the Elysée presidential palace, the Senate, and National Assembly. It wraps up at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Quai d’Orsay.

At the weekend, French President François Hollande said that he had received proof that the four were still alive.

But the friends and family of the hostages are determined that Monday’s march will do as much as possible to ensure more is done to secure their release.

{{A report by UN inspectors due to be made public on Monday will say that there is “clear and convincing evidence” that chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale in an attack last month that killed hundreds of people in Syria.}}

Inspectors will say that “the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used … in the Ghouta area of Damascus” on August 21.

“The conclusion is that chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic … against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale,” the report will add.

The information was in the first page of the report which was inadvertently leaked when it was included in an official picture of UN investigation leader Ake Sellstrom handing over the document to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Ban is scheduled to present the full report to the UN Security Council in New York at 11:15am local time (15:15 GMT) on Monday morning.

The August 21 chemical attack unfolded as a UN chemical weapons team was in Syria to investigate earlier reported attacks. After days of delays, the inspectors were allowed access to victims, doctors and others in the Damascus suburbs.

Inspectors were mandated to report on whether chemical weapons were used and if so which ones – not on who was responsible.

The rebels and their Western and Arab supporters blame President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for the attack in the rebel-controlled area of Ghouta. The Assad regime insists that the attack was carried out by rebels.

The alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad led to threats of military strikes against his regime by the US and others. But a diplomatic breakthrough came last week in the form of a US-Russian plan that will see Syria hand over its chemical weapons arsenal to the international community.

wirestory

{{A video released by the North African arm of al-Qaeda apparently shows seven Western hostages are still alive.}}

Mauritanian news agency ANI, which received the footage, says it shows four Frenchmen kidnapped from a uranium compound in Niger three years ago.

All the captives, including a Dutchman, a Swede and South African, who were kidnapped in northern Mali in November 2011, seemed in good health, ANI said.

The French foreign ministry said it believed the video was credible.

The video was apparently sent to ANI by the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

“Based on an initial analysis, the video seems credible to us and provides new proof of life of the four French hostages kidnapped in Arlit (northern Niger) on 16 September 2010,” French foreign ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said.

{{Salvage crews completed raising the wreck of the Costa Concordia in the early hours of Tuesday morning after a 19-hour-long operation on the Italian island of Giglio where the huge cruise liner capsized in January last year.}}

One of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage operations ever attempted saw the 114,500-ton ship pulled upright by a series of huge jacks and cables and set on artificial platforms drilled into the rocky sea bed.

The operation was completed at around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT) without any significant problems.

“The ship has been settled onto its platforms,” Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy’s Civil Protection Authority, told reporters and a group of cheering residents who waited up into the early hours of the morning to hear the news.

“We have accomplished an important step towards removing the ship from the island,” he said.

The Concordia, a 290-metre-long (950-foot-long) liner carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew, capsized and sank with the loss of 32 lives on Jan. 13, 2012 after it struck rocks outside Giglio, where it has lain ever since, half-submerged on a rock shelf.

The vessel bore the marks of its long period on the rocks, with brown mud stains scarring the hull and clear signs of deformation to the structure.

After a salvage operation estimated to have cost more than 600 million euros ($801.15 million), the vast hulk will remain in place for some months more while it is stabilised and refloated before being towed away to be broken up for scrap.

The so-called “parbuckling” operation, in which the giant hulk was painstakingly rotated upright took longer than the 10-12 hours initially estimated but engineers said the project had gone exceptionally smoothly.

{{A U.S. military veteran(above) opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday in a burst of violence that killed 13 people, including the gunman, and set off waves of panic at the military installation just miles from the White House.}}

The FBI identified the suspect as Aaron Alexis, 34, of Fort Worth, Texas, a Navy contractor who had two gun-related brushes with the law. He was discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2011 after a series of misconduct issues, a Navy official said.

He was killed in one of several gun battles with police after he entered the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters about 8:20 a.m. (1220 GMT) and started picking off victims in a cafeteria from a fourth-floor atrium, witnesses said.

That set off pandemonium, with fire alarms sounding and security officers yelling at people to leave the building. Hundreds fled, some scrambling over walls to escape the gunfire. A loudspeaker announcement ordered those who remained to stay in their offices.

The motive remained unknown. He was armed with an AR-15 military-style assault rifle, a double-barreled shotgun and a handgun, a federal law enforcement source said.