World/Nation Briefs September 27, 2013
Tales of survival emerge from Nairobi mall
NAIROBI, Kenya - It's 1:30 on Saturday afternoon in the Westgate Mall. Rafia Khan is huddling in a crawl space of the Millionaires Casino with her cousin and eight other people as gunmen roam the building and shoot, again and again, into crowds of shoppers.
Now she is teaching those in hiding - perfect strangers - words that she hopes will keep them alive.
The group had found the ceiling-level space as they fled gunfire and explosions.
While they are hiding, word spreads by mobile phone text messages that Islamic militants have taken control of the shopping mall that houses the casino. Word also spreads that the gunmen are allowing Muslims to leave - testing them by asking about their knowledge of Islam.
House GOP nixes stopgap bill if it fails to defund Obamacare
WASHINGTON -
Moving closer to the brink of a government shutdown, House Republicans vowed Thursday they won't simply accept the stopgap legislation that is likely to remain after Senate Democrats strip away a plan to dismantle President Barack Obama's health care law.
A sense of confusion settled over the House, both over how to avoid a shutdown and how to handle even more important legislation to increase the government's borrowing ability to avert a default on U.S. obligations. Short of votes, House leaders shelved a vote that had been expected this weekend on the debt limit measure and gave frustrated GOP lawmakers few clues about what they plan to do to avoid a shutdown.
The chaos sets the stage for weekend drama on Capitol Hill, with the Senate planning to send the fractious House a straightforward bill today to keep the government operating through Nov. 15 rather than partly closing down at midnight Monday.
Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and several rank-and-file Republicans said the House simply won't accept a "clean" spending measure, even though that's been the norm in Congress on dozens of occasions since the 1995-96 government closures that bruised Republicans and strengthened the hand of Democratic President Bill Clinton.
U.S., allies welcome new Iranian attitude
UNITED NATIONS -
U.S. and European diplomats welcomed a "significant shift" in Iran's attitude at talks on Thursday aimed at resolving the impasse over Tehran's disputed nuclear activities. Iran said it was eager to dispel the notion that it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon and to get international sanctions lifted as fast as possible.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif shook hands and sat next to each other at the meeting with five other world powers. Kerry leaned over to Zarif as the meeting was ending and said: "Shall we talk for a few minutes." They then had an unexpected one-on-one meeting.
It was the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in six years.
Zarif said the meeting with the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany agreed to fast-track negotiations. He said Iran hopes they can reach a deal within a year.
Key powers reach agreement on U.N. resolution
UNITED NATIONS -
The five permanent members of the deeply divided U.N. Security Council reached agreement Thursday on a resolution to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, a major step in taking the most controversial weapon off the battlefield of the world's deadliest current conflict.
Senior U.S., Russian, British and French diplomats confirmed the agreement, which also includes China. The full 15-member Security Council met behind closed doors Thursday night, and Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said he would introduce the text there.
A vote on the resolution still depends on how the full council responds to the draft, and on how soon an international group that oversees the global treaty on chemical weapons can adopt a plan for securing and destroying Syria's stockpile. Diplomats said the earliest the Security Council could vote would be late today.
Both Lyall Grant and a senior U.S. State Department official described the draft resolution as "binding and enforceable."
Chief sidesteps questions about tracking calls
WASHINGTON -
The nation's top intelligence official on Thursday sidestepped questions from a senator about whether the National Security Agency has ever used Americans cellphone signals to collect information on their whereabouts that would allow tracking of the movements of individual callers.
Asked twice by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., if NSA had ever collected or made plans to collect such data, NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander answered both times by reading from a letter provided to senators who had asked the same question last summer. He also cited a classified version of the letter that was sent to senators and said, "What I don't want to do ... is put out in an unclassified forum anything that's classified."
Wyden promised to keep asking.
- The Associated Press