Somalia president blasts mall attack
UNITED NATIONS – Somalia’s president has condemned the “cruel and terrible” attack on a Nairobi mall and says the fight against the Islamic extremist group based in his country is “far from over.”
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told the U.N. General Assembly in a speech Thursday that the group affiliated with al-Qaida is “down but not dead,” and he asked the international community for more “tools to finish the job.”
Mohamud spoke shortly after the al-Shabab leader said attacks will continue until Kenyan troops are withdrawn from Somalia.
Cuba easing rules on private businesses
HAVANA – Real estate agents, auto-body workers and home builders can come out of the shadows in Cuba’s expanding private economy under rules announced Thursday that allow 18 new categories of independent employment under President Raul Castro’s economic reforms.
Among the most notable of the newly allowed private professions are real estate agents, who have long operated on the margin of the law. Even after the communist government legalized the buying and selling of homes in 2011 for the first time in decades, it was still technically against the rules to make money connecting buyers with sellers.
The number of approved independent employment activities rises to 199 with the newly legalized professions, , which also include rental agents and welders.
Cut jewels discovered in French mountains
PARIS – A French mountain climber stumbled upon a case of dozens of cut jewels, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars believed to be debris from one of two Air India crashes decades ago, police said.
Police commander Sylvain Merly of France’s Savoie region said the experienced Mont Blanc climber, who asked to stay anonymous, found the box marked “Made in India” while scaling one of the peak’s glaciers and turned it in on Sept. 9. Authorities hope to find someone connected with its owner, who is presumed to have been a passenger on one of the two jets that crashed in 1950 or 1966.
Associated Press
