Crude oil futures pared gains yesterday after top producers Russia and Saudi Arabia confirmed they had agreed to co-operate on stabilising the oil market, including limiting output.

Oil gained after Opec’s president said the group will hold informal talks in Algiers next month and predicted the current bear market would be short lived.

After a deep slide in oil prices, Algeria’s Sonatrach is shifting strategy to offer foreign firms direct negotiations to buy stakes in 20 oil and gas fields in a bid to attract investors and increase output, a source at the state energy company said.

The EU’s dream of building “a ring of friends” from the Caucasus to the Sahara has turned into a nightmare as conflicts beyond its borders send refugees teeming into Europe.

With Greece teetering on the brink of a eurozone exit there has never been a more pressing time to reform the EU, writes Kyran Fitzgerald

WEST CORK has a few iconic bars with a reputation spreading over the waves — and the Algiers Inn is definitely up there with the best of them, hosting celebs, slaking thirsts and appearing in movies, ads and TV shows.

A vibrant, multi-hued painting from Pablo Picasso set a world record for artwork at auction, selling for $179.4m (€159.5m), while a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti set a record for most expensive sculpture, at $141.3m (€125.6m).

Aviation regulators are expected to issue new advice to pilots after investigations into the crash of an Air Algerie jet in Mali last July found it went out of control after being hit by ice as an anti-icing system remained switched off.

A French citizen has been kidnapped by suspected Islamic militants while hiking in a mountainous Algerian region that is a known hideout for North Africa’s al Qaida branch.

French officials have dispatched a military unit to secure the site in restive northern Mali where an Air Algerie plane crashed with the loss of 116 people.

There are fears today that scattered separatist violence may hamper an eventual investigation into what is the third major international aviation disaster in a week.

The wreckage of the Air Algerie plane that went missing has been found about 31 miles from the border of Burkina Faso near the village of Boulikessi in Mali, a presidential aide said.

An army general in Burkina Faso who is involved in the search for the missing Air Algerie flight carrying 116 people, claims that a witness saw a plane coming down in Mali.

The Air Algerie flight that went missing over Mali has “probably crashed”, France’s foreign minister said.

An Algerian aviation official says the passenger plane missing over Northern Mali has crashed.

An Air Algerie flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers in northern Africa has disappeared from radar, the official Algerian news agency confirmed.

Patrick Altes was aged just four when he arrived in Paris with his family. They had been displaced from their home as the 1962 Algerian War of Independence expelled its population of European colonists.

Katie Taylor has added the Irish elite lightweight belt to her Olympic, World, European and EU titles without throwing a punch.

More than 100 people died when a military plane crashed in the east of Algeria, according to an intelligence service officer.

Books for grown-ups

It is 382 years this week since the Jun 20, 1631, raid on the thriving Cork fishing village of Baltimore by pirates from Algiers in Morocco.

Richard Fitzpatrick picks his top summer reads — don’t go to the beach without one of these in your bag.

The Tradescants’ Orchard

The gas plant at Amenas is giving up its secrets as Algerian special forces picking their way through the vast complex find dozens of bodies, some charred beyond recognition in the bloody end-game to one of the worst hostage crises in years.

Three British nationals have died and three more are feared dead following the Algerian hostage crisis, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said today.

Eleven militants have been killed in a final assault by Algerian special forces on a desert gas facility where workers were being held captive, the state news agency said today.

Algerian security forces are trying to bring to an end a four-day stand-off with Islamist extremists holding foreign hostages at a remote gas plant, a drama that has left at least 12 dead and horrified governments around the world.

Algerian special forces are continuing to hunt Islamist militants who overran a BP gas plant as freed hostages headed home.

The bloody three-day hostage standoff at a natural gas plant in the Sahara took a dramatic turn yesterday as Algeria’s state news service reported that nearly 100 of the 132 foreign workers kidnapped by Islamic militants had been freed.

Americans are still being held hostage in Algeria on the third day of a stand-off with militants at a natural gas complex in the Sahara, a US official said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided to cut short his first foreign visit since taking office to focus on the Algerian hostage crisis.

Algerian special forces launched a rescue operation yesterday at a natural gas plant in the Sahara Desert and freed foreign hostages held by al Qaeda linked militants, but estimates for the number of dead varied wildly from four to dozens.

A married 36-year-old Irishman is believed to be unharmed after he was caught up in a terrorist attack on an oil facility in Algeria. He is still a hostage of the militant Islamist group that carried out the attack.

After two decades as a diplomatic troubleshooter in hotspots from Afghanistan to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi firmly believes that every conflict can be solved.

Is it correct to refer to “the Western mass media” as an entity?

Pirates who sacked a West Cork village in 1631 sold more than double the amount of its inhabitants into slavery than was previously thought, new research has found.

Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s first president and a historic leader of its bloody independence struggle from France, died at his family home in Algiers today aged 95.

The funeral of the gunman who killed seven people has been delayed for 24 hours after the mayor of Toulouse said burying him in the city would be "inappropriate".