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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. An amateur prospector in Australia thought he'd stumbled on a car hood. It turned out to be a giant gold nugget shaped like a goldfish. The owner of the local gold shop told the Herald newspaper that if the anonymous prospector was silly enough to melt it down it would be worth nearly $300,000.

Unlikely, since its size and shape make it so rare. The gold will be worth far more to a museum or collector. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

(We updated the top of this post at 8:55 ET.)

An American worker has been confirmed dead at the natural gas complex in eastern Algeria where Islamic extremists seized hostages, the U.S. State Department said Friday evening in a statement.

The State Department identified the man as Frederick Buttaccio, a Texas resident, but did not provide additional details on the circumstances.

On Thursday, Algerian forces opened fire on Islamists holding dozens of foreigners hostage. The militants, who have been linked to al-Qaida, say they took over the gas facility deep into the Sahara Desert in retaliation for France's attack on Islamic militants in the west African nation of Mali.

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As President Obama prepares to start a second term, MORNING EDITION has asked NPR's foreign correspondents to gauge worldwide expectations for the next four years. We turn, this morning, to Kenya. Pride still runs deep there for the president with roots in Kenya. But expectations of America's role have shifted from donor-aid to partner-in-trade.

NPR's Gregory Warner has the story.

Robert Siegel talks with Alan Boswell, Africa Correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, about the fight in Mali between French forces and Islamist militants. Boswell calls Mali the new front line in the war on terror.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The turmoil in Algeria, as well as in Mali, is a reminder of the complicated relationship that still exists between France and many of its former African colonies. Howard French has spent many years thinking and writing about that relationship. He's an associate professor at the Columbia University graduate school of journalism and a former long time foreign correspondent for the New York Times. Mr. French, welcome to the program.

HOWARD FRENCH: Good afternoon.

The U.S. formally recognized the Somali government for the first time in 20 years on Thursday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mahamud at the State Department. Hassan is the first permanent Somali president since 1991 and faces a daunting task of rebuilding a nation torn by conflict and Islamist insurgencies.

Algerian forces attacked the oil and gas facility being held by Islamist militants in the eastern part of Algeria on Thursday. Reports indicated that some hostages were freed, some were killed and some were still in the compound with their captors. Before the Algerian forces attacked, militants said they held about 40 hostages from a variety of countries. Reports say that some militants were also killed in the military operation.

Hours after French troops launched a ground offensive in Mali to quash an Islamist rebellion, militants retaliated by seizing dozens of hostages, reportedly including Americans, in neighboring Algeria — an attack that underscores Western fears of a deteriorating security situation in northwestern Africa.

In an ongoing crisis in North Africa, the Algerian military has reportedly launched an operation in response to the dozens of hostages taken by extremist groups at a gas field near the Libyan border. NPR's Neal Conan talks with University of Cambridge lecturer George Joffe about the evolving situation.