Sasha's View: 'Good Job, Daddy. You Didn't Mess Up'

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden today officially embarked on their second term, taking the Constitutionally mandated oath of office in two separate private ceremonies inside their homes.

Shortly before noon in the Blue Room of the White House, Obama raised his right hand, with his left on a family Bible, reciting the oath administrated by Chief Justice John Roberts. He was surrounded by immediate family members, including first lady Michelle Obama and daughters, Malia and Sasha.

As he hugged his wife and daughters, Sasha said, "Good job, Daddy."

"I did it," he said.

"You didn't mess up," she answered.

Biden was sworn in earlier today by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to administer a presidential oath, in a ceremony at his official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory. He was joined by more than 120 guests, including cabinet members, extended family and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.

Because Jan. 20 -- the official date for a new presidential term -- falls on a Sunday this year, organizers delayed by one day the traditional public inauguration ceremony and parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Vice President Joe Biden Sworn in for 2nd Term Watch Video

President Obama's 2nd Inauguration: Hundreds of Thousands to Attend Watch Video

Obama and Biden will each repeat the oath on Monday on the west front of the Capitol, surrounded by hundreds of dignitaries and members of Congress. An estimated 800,000 people are expected to gather on the National Mall to witness the moment and inaugural parade to follow.

The dual ceremonies in 2013 means Obama will become the second president in U.S. history to take the presidential oath four times. He was sworn in twice in 2008 out of an abundance of caution after Roberts flubbed the oath of office during the public administration. This year Roberts read from a script.

Franklin Roosevelt was also sworn in four times but, unlike Obama, he was elected four times.

This year will mark the seventh time a president has taken the oath on a Sunday and then again on Monday for ceremonial purposes. Reagan last took the oath on a Sunday in 1985.

Both Obama and Biden took the oath using a special family Bible. Obama used a text that belonged to Michelle Obama's grandmother LaVaughn Delores Robinson. Biden placed his hand on a 120-year-old book with a Celtic cross on the cover that has been passed down through Biden clan.

The official inaugural activities today also included moments of prayer and remembrance that marked the solemnity of the day.

Obama and Biden met at Arlington National Cemetery for a brief morning ceremony to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns, honoring military service members who served and sacrificed. The men stood shoulder to shoulder, bowing their heads as a bugler played "Taps."

Biden, who is Catholic, began the day with a private family mass at his residence. The president and first family attended church services at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historically black church and site of two pre-inaugural prayer services for former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and their families.

The Obamas and Bidens plan to participate in a church service on Monday morning at St. John's Episcopal, across Lafayette Park from the White House. They will also attend a National Prayer Service on Tuesday at the National Cathedral.

Later on Sunday evening, the newly-inaugurated leaders will attend a candlelight reception at the National Building Museum. The president and vice president are expected to deliver brief remarks to their supporters.

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WP will strengthen the voice of the opposition: Lee Li Lian

SINGAPORE: Workers' Party (WP) candidate for the Punggol East by-election, Lee Li Lian said having another WP member in Parliament will strengthen the voice of the opposition.

It means more airtime for the opposition to ask more questions on behalf of Singaporeans and this, she said will definitely make a difference.

Ms Lee refuted talk that having the WP members in Parliament did not make a difference, saying they have done an excellent job.

She was speaking to reporters after a morning walkabout at Rivervale Plaza.

- CNA/ck

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Memorial service honors Swartz as activist, individual

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the main threads running through today's memorial service in New York City for tech activist Aaron Swartz was a call to action.

That call arose again and again from varied speakers, and was sounded as one of the final notes of the observance when master of ceremonies Ben Wikler, a political campaigner and friend of Swartz's, announced that the service had come to an end but added, "I hope it's clear this is just the beginning of everything we have to do."

Prior to Wikler's closing remarks, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman -- founder of SumOfUs.org, an organization devoted to corporate accountability, and Swartz's partner at the time of his suicide, spelled out what some of that "everything" should be.

A fitting tribute to Swartz, she said, would be for "all of us to go out today and fight to make the world a better place." Specifically, Stinebrickner-Kauffman said, the U.S. Attorney's office in Massachusetts -- which at the time of Swartz's death was prosecuting him for his alleged theft of millions of documents from the Jstor database of academic articles -- must be "held accountable" for what critics have said was its persecution of Swartz.

She said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Swartz accessed the database, "must be sure that it's never again complicit" in the sort of pressure put on Swartz by the government. She said the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a mid-1980s antihacking law, must be reformed so "this kind of power" over accused hackers could never again be handed to prosecutors. And she said the entire criminal justice system in the U.S. must be reformed in order to make it truly just.

Stinebrickner-Kauffman also said, in a remark that inspired a roar of approval from the hundreds gathered to remember Swartz -- a champion of open access to information -- that all academic research must be made freely available to everyone, everywhere.

Quinn Norton said she'd come to speak not about the "incredibly accomplished activist" or the "Internet saint," but about "a person who almost never did any of the damn dishes" and who sang to her daughter in the car.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET)

'Hack the whole world'
More than one appeal for action was aimed at the tech community. Doc Searls -- a fellow at the Center for Information Technology and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an alumnus fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University -- spoke of how Swartz, a figurehead of the anti-SOPA movement, fought the system. Most geeks, he said, "tend to avoid the legal stuff.... There are so few geeks that go that extra step to protect us.... We need to do the work he started."

Roy Singham, chair of IT consultancy Thoughtworks and a major proponent of open-source software, spoke of Swartz's fear that the "wonderful world of technology" would be "usurped" and end up not being a tool of democracy. He contrasted Swartz with the heads of well-known and moneymaking tech companies, whom he called the "self-aggrandizing ego maniacs" who use technology for the benefit "of the 1 percent."

And Stinebrickner-Kauffman recalled a scene in which Swartz spoke before a group of programmers, wielding a picture of Harry Potter, snapping his fingers, and telling them that they could "do magic," that they could "make the world a better place with programming."

David Segal -- a politician, and executive director of the online organizing group Demand Progress -- said Swartz wanted to change everything: "He was trying to hack the whole world -- in the best possible way."

'Another human being'
But there was room too, among the cries for action, for reflection on Swartz's everyday humanity. Writer and photographer Quinn Norton, a former partner of Swartz's, noted that with his death, Swartz had "left us and entered the realm of mythmaking." She wanted to be sure he was remembered in a multidimensional way, as someone who neglected to do the dishes, who sang to her daughter in the
car, who "was another human being with all the flaws and glories that we all have."

At the same time, however, there seemed to be little doubt on the part of Quinn and the other speakers that the world had lost someone special. As Edward Tufte, the famous writer on information design, put it, Swartz was "marvelously and vigorously different" and there's a scarcity of that in today's world. Perhaps, Tufte said, "we can all be a little more different too."

A video of the service can be viewed on the "Remember Aaron Swartz" Web site. (As of this writing, the audio is garbled during the first few seconds of the archived video, but it quickly rights itself. At this point, too, only the first 40 minutes or so of the service are available for viewing.)

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Algerian assault ends crisis, 23 hostages dead

Last Updated 4:18 p.m. ET

AIN AMENAS, Algeria Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the middle of the Sahara desert on Saturday in a "final assault" that ended a four-day-old hostage crisis, according to the state news agency and two foreign governments.

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Panetta: "We know that lives have been lost" in Algeria

The Algerian government says 32 militants and 23 captives were killed during a three-day military operation to end the hostage crisis.

The provisional death toll was issued by the Interior Ministry on Saturday after the special forces operation crushed the last holdout of militants at the gas refinery, resulting in 11 extremists killed along with seven hostages.

A total of 685 Algerian and 107 foreigner workers were freed over the course of the standoff, which began on Wednesday, the statement added.

The military also confiscated machine guns, rocket launchers, missiles and grenades attached to suicide belts.

The ministry added that the militants involved consisted of 32 men of various nationalities, including three Algerians.

An earlier report said the army was forced to intervene Saturday after a fire broke out in the plant, and said the militants killed the hostages. It wasn't immediately possible to verify who killed the captives.

The report, quoting a security source, also didn't give the nationalities of the dead.

The Ain Amenas plant is jointly run by BP, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's state-owned oil company. The governments of Norway and Britain said they received confirmation the siege was over.

A high-resolution satellite image of the Amenas gas facility taken on Dec 7, 2012.

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GeoEye Satellite Image

The entire refinery was mined with explosives and set to blow up, the Algerian state oil company Sonatrach said in a statement, adding that the process of clearing the explosives had begun. The Algerian media reported that the militants had planned to blow up the complex.

The siege transfixed the world after radical Islamists linked to al Qaeda stormed the complex, which contained hundreds of plant workers from all over the world.

Algeria's response to the crisis was typical of the country's history in confronting terrorists — military action over negotiation — and caused an international outcry from countries worried about their citizens. Algerian military forces twice assaulted the areas where the hostages were being held with minimal apparent negotiation — first on Thursday and then on Saturday.

The latest deaths bring the official Algerian tally of dead to 19 hostages and 29 militants, although reports on the number of dead, injured and freed have been contradictory throughout the crisis. Militants originally said they had seized 41 foreign hostages.

The al Qaeda-linked militants attacked the plant Wednesday morning. They crept across the border from Libya, 60 miles (100 kilometers) away, and fell on a pair of buses taking foreign workers to the airport. The buses' military escort drove off the attackers in a blaze of gunfire that sent bullets zinging over the heads of crouching workers. A Briton and an Algerian — probably a security guard — were killed.

Frustrated, the militants turned to the vast gas complex, divided between the workers' living quarters and the refinery itself, and seized hostages, the Algerian government said. The gas flowing to the site was cut off.

On Thursday, Algerian helicopters opened fire on a convoy carrying both kidnappers and their hostages, resulting in many deaths, according to witnesses.

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Algeria Hostage Crisis Over, One American Dead

After the Algerian military's final assault on terrorists holding hostages at a gas complex, the four-day hostage crisis is over, but apparently with additional loss of life among the foreign hostages.

One American, Fred Buttaccio of Texas, has been confirmed dead by the U.S. State Department. Two more U.S. hostages remain unaccounted for, with growing concern among U.S. officials that they did not survive.

But another American, Mark Cobb of Corpus Christi, Texas is now confirmed as safe. Sources close to his family say Cobb, who is a senior manager of the facility, is safe and reportedly sent a text message " I'm alive."

Inside Algerian Hostage Crisis, One American Dead Watch Video

American Hostages Escape From Algeria Terrorists Watch Video

In a statement, President Obama said, "Today, the thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the families of all those who were killed and injured in the terrorist attack in Algeria. The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out, and the United States condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms. ... This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups in North Africa."

According to Algerian state media, 32 militants are dead and a total of 23 hostages perished during the four-day siege of the In Amenas facility in the Sahara. The Algerian Interior Ministry also says 107 foreign nationals who worked at the facility for BP and other firms were rescued or escaped from the al Qaeda-linked terrorists who took over the BP joint venture facility on Wednesday.

The Japanese government says it fears "very grave" news, with multiple casualties among the 10 Japanese citizens working at the In Amenas gas plant.

Five British nationals and one U.K. resident are either deceased or unaccounted for in the country, according to British Foreign Minister William Hague. Hague also said that the Algerians have reported that they are still trying to clear boobytraps from the site.

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Foreigners still trapped in Sahara hostage crisis

ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - More than 20 foreigners were captive or missing inside a desert gas plant on Saturday, nearly two days after the Algerian army launched an assault to free them that saw many hostages killed.

The standoff between the Algerian army and al Qaeda-linked gunmen - one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades - entered its fourth day, having thrust Saharan militancy to the top of the global agenda.

The number and fate of victims has yet to be confirmed, with the Algerian government keeping officials from Western countries far from the site where their countrymen were in peril.

Reports put the number of hostages killed at between 12 to 30, with possibly dozens of foreigners still unaccounted for - among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons, Americans and others.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed on Friday the death of one American, Frederick Buttaccio, in the hostage situation, but gave no further details.

Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among the seven foreigners confirmed dead in the army's storming, the Algerian security source told Reuters. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.

A U.S. official said on Friday that a U.S. Medevac flight carrying wounded of multiple nationalities had left Algeria.

By nightfall on Friday, the Algerian military was holding the vast residential barracks at the In Amenas gas processing plant, while gunmen were holed up in the industrial plant itself with an undisclosed number of hostages.

Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to a French military operation in neighboring Mali.

Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched an operation, but many hostages were killed in the assault. Algerian forces destroyed four trucks holding hostages, according to the family of a Northern Irish engineer who escaped from a fifth truck and survived.

Leaders of Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed frustration that the assault was ordered without consultation and officials have grumbled at the lack of information. Many countries also withheld details about their missing citizens to avoid releasing information that might aid the captors.

An Algerian security source said 30 hostages, including at least seven Westerners, had been killed during Thursday's assault, along with at least 18 of their captors. Eight of the dead hostages were Algerian, with the nationalities of the rest of the dead still unclear, he said.

Algeria's state news agency APS put the total number of dead hostages at 12, including both foreigners and locals.

The base was home to foreign workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.

Norway says eight Norwegians are still missing. JGC said it was missing 10 staff. Britain and the United States have said they have citizens unaccounted for but have not said how many.

The Algerian security source said 100 foreigners had been freed but 32 were still unaccounted for.

"We must be prepared for bad news this weekend but we still have hope," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

The attack has plunged international capitals into crisis mode and is a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

"We are still dealing with a fluid and dangerous situation where a part of the terrorist threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, but there still remains a threat in another part," British Prime Minister David Cameron told his parliament.

"(The army) is still trying to achieve a ‘peaceful outcome' before neutralizing the terrorist group that is holed up in the (facility) and freeing a group of hostages that is still being held," Algeria's state news agency said on Friday, quoting a security source.

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Algerian commanders said they moved in on Thursday about 30 hours after the siege began, because the gunmen had demanded to be allowed to take their captives abroad.

A French hostage employed by a French catering company said he had hidden in his room for 40 hours under the bed before he was rescued by Algerian troops, relying on Algerian employees to smuggle him food with a password.

"I put boards up pretty much all round," Alexandre Berceaux told Europe 1 radio. "I didn't know how long I was going to stay there ... I was afraid. I could see myself already ending up in a pine box."

The captors said their attack was a response to the French military offensive in neighboring Mali. However, some U.S. and European officials say the elaborate raid probably required too much planning to have been organized from scratch in the single week since France first launched its strikes.

Paris says the incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary.

Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.

The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in a civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of Al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.

Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year, prompting the French intervention in that poor African former colony.

The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough Algerian security measures.

Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said those responsible would be hunted down: "Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere. ... Those who would wantonly attack our country and our people will have no place to hide."

(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London, Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries in Dublin, Andrew Quinn and David Alexander in Washington; Writing by Philippa Fletcher and Peter Graff; Editing by Andrew Roche, Tom Pfeiffer and Jackie Frank)

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Fate of two Malaysians unknown in Algerian crisis

KUALA LUMPUR: The fate of two Malaysians believed to have been caught up in the ongoing hostage crisis at a gas complex in the Algerian desert remains unknown, the foreign ministry said Saturday.

It said that three other Malaysians who were working at the gas plant were safe. The embassy in Algeria "is still determining the fate" of the other two, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Al-Qaeda-linked gunmen stormed the gas plant in eastern Algeria on Wednesday. They have demanded an end to the French intervention in neighboring Mali, according to Mauritania's ANI news agency.

The number of foreigners held at the plant is unclear.

The kidnappers have said they are still holding seven at the site deep in the Sahara desert near the border with Libya. An Algerian security official put their number at 10.

An Algerian security official said a dramatic military assault during the week to rescue those held had left dead 12 hostages and 18 kidnappers dead.

- AFP/ck

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Researcher: Apps meant to spot skin cancer are inaccurate

Researchers ran 188 images of skin lesions through four apps and found that three apps incorrectly described at least 30 percent of the melanomas as benign.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore/CNET)

When a patient asked Laura Ferris, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, her opinion on smartphone apps that purport to distinguish between benign and malignant skin lesions, Ferris realized she'd never used one and decided to run images of melanomas through a few of the apps herself.

"When I saw the first few results come back of them being missed, I really started to get concerned," Ferris says in a school video. So she decided to investigate further, and reports this week in JAMA Dermatology that three out of four smartphone apps her team tested incorrectly described at least 30 percent of melanomas as "unconcerning."

The news comes the same week a Pew Research Center study found that 35 percent of Americans seek out medical diagnoses (not just remedies or information) online.

For the melanoma study, researchers uploaded 188 images of skin lesions to each of the four applications (they decided "not to make a direct statement about a particular app" and are thus not naming the apps they studied). The apps analyzed the images in different ways, including automated algorithms and images reviewed by an anonymous board-certified dermatologist.

It turns out that of the four melanoma apps studied, the most accurate one was not only the most expensive (costing $5 per image) but also was the only one to rely on the dermatologist to review the images. (In this case, just one of the 53 melanomas uploaded was incorrectly identified as benign.)

These results could be particularly problematic for those without the resources to go to an actual dermatologist or afford the most expensive app, especially if they take an "unconcerning" result as confirmation that they need not spend any more money investigating the area in question.

"If [users] see a concerning lesion but the smartphone app incorrectly judges it to be benign, they may not follow up with a physician," says Ferris, whose study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. "Technologies that decrease the mortality rate by improving self- and early-detection of melanomas would be a welcome addition to dermatology, but we have to make sure patients aren't being harmed by tools that deliver inaccurate results."

The researchers further warn that even though the free or low-cost apps are specified as educational only, they are not subject to regulatory oversight and should be used with caution.

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At least one American dead in Algerian hostage crisis

Updated at 6:41 p.m. ET

An American in the Algerian hostage standoff in the Algerian desert has been killed, CBS News has learned.

Fredrick Buttaccio from Katy, Texas near Houston, was an employee of the oil company BP. It is unknown how he died, but U.S. government sources tell CBS News his body has been recovered and his family has been notified.

Meanwhile, a U.S. military plane has landed in Amenas, Algeria to pick up nine passengers - one American and eight foreign nationals - to be transported to Landstuhl, Germany, a military source told CBS News.

The flight, which contains an air medical evacuation team, was expected to have departed Algeria by Thursday afternoon.

It's not clear exactly how many total casualties have resulted from the fighting, but Algeria's state news agency reported that 12 foreign and Algerian workers had died since the start of the operation, citing an unidentified security source. That information could not be independently confirmed.

As CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reported, the freed hostages told of how they fled in the confusion as the Algerian army attacked. Many were injured, some badly. One person said: "It happened so fast."

But it hasn't ended quickly, reported Phillips. The Algerians say they've freed nearly a hundred foreigners. And as they were being bused away, many thanked their rescuers. "They kept us all nice and safe and fought off the bad guys," said another person.

Also, more detail of the ordeal has emerged with the freed hostages. Some say they had explosives hung around their necks as they were placed in a convoy of vehicles by their captors. When the cars began to move, the Algerian Army units surrounding the site feared the captives were being taken out of the compound -- and opened fire.

The al Qaeda-linked Masked Battalio, led from afar by Moktar Belmoktar, may still be holding some of the roughly 30 foreigners still unaccounted for.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not get into specifics on the crisis Friday afternoon, but described it as an "extremely difficult and dangerous situation" and called on the Algerian government to "preserve innocent life" in their efforts to fully resolve the crisis. Clinton spoke after the State Department said that Americans were still being held hostage.

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 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. While Algerian officials acknowledged some hostage deaths, the number could not be independently confirmed.

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.

A high-resolution satellite image of the Amenas gas facility taken on Dec 7, 2012.

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GeoEye Satellite Image

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 plant. BP, which jointly operates the plant, said it had begun to evacuate employees from Algeria.

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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One American Confirmed Dead in Algeria

U.S. officials told ABC News that at least one American has been killed in the hostage standoff at an Algerian gas plant, and the family of the deceased American has been notified.

An al Qaeda-linked group called the Masked Brigade and led by the one-eyed jihadi Mokhtar Belmokhtar raided the BP joint venture facility in In Amenas on Wednesday, taking an undetermined number of hostages from more than half a dozen nations, including at least two Americans.

On Friday, the group demanded the release of two convicted terrorists held in U.S. prisons, including the "blind sheikh" who helped plan the first attack on New York's World Trade Center, in exchange for the freedom of two American hostages, according to an African news service.

The terror group reportedly contacted a Mauritanian news service with the offer. In addition to the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, they demanded the release of Aifia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who shot at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008.

Asked about the unconfirmed report of a proposed swap, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said firmly, "The United States does not negotiate with terrorists." She repeated the statement again when questioned further. She also said she was not prepared to get into any details about the status of Americans in "an ongoing hostage situation."

At least three Americans were being held hostage by the militants when the Algerian military mounted a rescue operation at the facility Thursday that reportedly resulted in casualties.

Five other Americans who were at the facility when it was attacked by the terrorists are now safe and believed to have left the country, according to U.S. officials.

Algeria Hostage Situation: Military Operation Mounted Watch Video

Reports that dozens of hostages were killed during the Algerian military's attempt to retake the compound have not been confirmed, though Algeria's information minister has confirmed that there were casualties. It's known by U.S. and foreign officials that multiple British, Japanese and Norwegian hostages were killed.

According to an unconfirmed report by an African news outlet, the militants said seven hostages survived the attack, including two Americans, one Briton, three Belgians and a Japanese national. U.S. officials monitoring the case had no information indicating any Americans have been injured or killed, but said the situation is fluid and casualties cannot be ruled out.

On Friday, a U.S. military plane evacuated between 10 and 20 people in need of medical attention, none of them American, from In Amenas and took them to an American medical facility in Europe. A second U.S. plane is preparing to evacuate additional passengers in need of medical attention.

British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament today that the terror attack "appears to have been a large, well coordinated and heavily armed assault and it is probable that it had been pre-planned."

"The terrorist group is believed to have been operating under Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a criminal terrorist and smuggler who has been operating in Mali and in the region for a number of years," said Cameron.

Cameron said Algerian security forces are still in action at the facility. On Thursday, he said that the situation was "very bad … A number of British citizens have been taken hostage. Already, we know of one who has died. ... I think we should be prepared for the possibility for further bad news, very difficult news in this extremely difficult situation."

The kidnappers had earlier released a statement saying there are "more than 40 crusaders" held "including 7 Americans."

U.S. officials had previously confirmed to ABC News that there were at least three Americans held hostage at the natural gas facility jointly owned by BP, the Algerian national oil company and a Norwegian firm at In Amenas, Algeria.

"I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation," said Panetta. "I don't think there's any question that [this was] a terrorist act and that the terrorists have affiliation with al Qaeda."

He said the precise motivation of the kidnappers was unknown.

"They are terrorists, and they will do terrorist acts," he said.

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