KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Kenyan security forces walked out of a store in Nairobi's Westgate Mall, holding plastic bags heavy with unknown items after Islamic extremists staged an attack. Others looked behind counters and lifted items.

In security camera video seen by The Associated Press on Sunday, some members of Kenya's armed forces appeared to loot a store during the four-day siege of Nairobi's most upscale mall. At least 67 people were killed in the attack by Islamic extremists.

Kenya's security forces have previously denied any wrongdoing.

Soon after the attack began on Sept. 21, Kenyan officials put a security cordon around the mall, allowing only security forces and a few government personnel to pass through. When the attack was over, some who owned shops inside the mall complained of looting.

Mobile phones were ripped from displays, cash registers emptied, and even alcohol stocks plundered, according to AP reporters at the scene after the siege ended.

View gallery."

In this image obtained by Associated Press Television News Sunday Oct 20 2013 from a security camera …

Public servants in Kenya, including police, firefighters and soldiers, are poorly paid and frequently accused of corruption.

An investigation into a huge fire at Nairobi's airport in August revealed that first responders had looted electronics, a bank and an ATM during and after the blaze.

In the case of the Westgate attack, a team of Kenyan lawmakers that investigated the looting allegations cleared soldiers of any wrongdoing.

The Somali Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibly for the mall attack, saying it was in retribution for Kenya's military involvement in Somalia.

Local and foreign investigators have since been digging through the rubble for evidence, and on Sunday another body believed to be that of one of the mall attackers was retrieved.

Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said in a statement that it was the fourth body that "we know from CCTV footage to be that of a terrorist. DNA and other investigations will confirm their identities."

Four AK-47 assault rifles believed to have been used by the attackers were also recovered, the statement said.

"We continue to dig through the rubble at Westgate," it said. "We are determined to bring this chapter to a close by identifying the terrorists responsible for the attack, including those who planned it."

Many questions, including what caused a part of the mall to collapse, remain unanswered nearly a month after the attack. Kenyan officials have urged patience, saying they need more time to investigate the scene.

Kenyan military accused of looting

Video from the Westgate shopping center shows soldiers allegedly stealing from a store during a terrorist siege.
History of corruption

People ride along a street on a smoggy day in Daqing, Heilongjiang province, October 21, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer

BEIJING (Reuters) - Choking smog all but shut down one of northeastern China's largest cities on Monday, forcing schools to suspended classes, snarling traffic and closing the airport, in the country's first major air pollution crisis of the winter.

An index measuring PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), reached a reading of 1,000 in some parts of Harbin, the gritty capital of northeastern Heilongjiang province and home to some 11 million people.

A level above 300 is considered hazardous, while the World Health Organisation recommends a daily level of no more than 20.

The smog not only forced all primary and middle schools to suspend classes, but shut the airport and some public bus routes, the official Xinhua news agency reported, blaming the emergency on the first day of the heating being turned on in the city for winter. Visibility was reportedly reduced to 10 meters.

The smog is expected to continue for the next 24 hours.

Air quality in Chinese cities is of increasing concern to China's stability-obsessed leadership because it plays into popular resentment over political privilege and rising inequality in the world's second-largest economy.

Domestic media have run stories describing the expensive air purifiers government officials enjoy in their homes and offices, alongside reports of special organic farms so cadres need not risk suffering from recurring food safety scandals.

The government has announced plans over the years to tackle the pollution problem but has made little apparent progress.

Users of China's popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging site reacted with both anger and bitter sarcasm over Harbin's air pollution.

"After years of effort, the wise and hard-working people of Harbin have finally managed to skip both the middle-class society and the communist society stages, and have now entered a fairyland society!" wrote on user.

Other parts of northeastern China also experienced severe smog, including Tangshan, two hours east of Beijing, and Changchun, the capital of Jilin province which borders Heilongjiang.

Last week, Beijing city released a color-coded alert system for handling air pollution emergencies, to include the temporary halt of construction, factory production, outdoor barbeques and the setting off of fireworks.

Beijing suffered its own smog emergency last winter when the PM2.5 surpassed 900 on one particularly bad day in January.

(Reporting By Adam Rose; Editing by Ben Blanchard and Michael Perry)


Smog emergency shuts city of 11 million

An air pollution crisis in one of China's largest cities snarls traffic and forces schools to suspend classes.
Airport closed

Japan delaying cleanup of towns near nuclear plant

TOKYO (AP) — Radiation cleanup in some of the most contaminated towns around Fukushima's damaged nuclear power plant is behind schedule, so some residents will have to wait a few more years before returning, Japanese officials said Monday.

Environment Ministry officials said they are revising the cleanup schedule for six of 11 municipalities in an exclusion zone from which residents were evacuated after three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant went into meltdown following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The original plan called for completing all decontamination by next March.

Nobody has been allowed to live in the zone again yet, though the government has allowed day visits to homes and businesses in some places after initial decontamination, said Shigeyoshi Sato, an Environment Ministry official in charge of decontamination.

"We will have to extend the cleanup process, by one year, two years or three years, we haven't exactly decided yet," he said.

Sato cited several reasons for the delay, including a lack of space for the waste from the decontamination work. Some residents have opposed dumping the waste in their neighborhoods.

View gallery."

Messages of support are written on a blackboard in a science class of primary school at the tsunami …

The Asahi newspaper reported on Saturday that the government is planning an extension of up to three years in areas such as Iitate, a village northwest of the plant where a highly radioactive plume spread in the first few days of the crisis.

Still, an International Atomic Energy Agency mission that visited the Fukushima area last week highlighted the progress Japan has made in the two years since the team's previous visit.

"The main conclusion of the mission is that Japan has achieved important progress," team leader Juan Carlos Lentijo told a news conference in Tokyo on Monday.

In a preliminary report released Monday, the team noted good progress in the remediation of farmland in some areas, and monitoring that has shown the land can produce food with levels of radioactivity below the permissible level. It also praised Japan's efforts to involve stakeholders, noting that the leadership of some key local figures has helped gained the trust of their communities.

Lentijo also stressed the need to strengthen communication with the public about the decontamination work and the costs and benefits.

View gallery."

This Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013 aerial photo shows the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant at Okuma in Fuku …

The 16-person team of international experts and IAEA staff visited Kawauchi, a village that has been partially opened to residents again. About 40 percent of its population of 3,000 has returned.

Beyond decontamination, other challenges in the affected areas include ensuring food safety and jobs.

___

Associated Press writer Yuri Kageyama contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Almost 6 million young people are neither in school nor working, according to a study released Monday.

That's almost 15 percent of those aged 16 to 24 who have neither desk nor job, according to The Opportunity Nation coalition, which wrote the report.

Other studies have shown that idle young adults are missing out on a window to build skills they will need later in life or use the knowledge they acquired in college. Without those experiences, they are less likely to command higher salaries and more likely to be an economic drain on their communities.

"This is not a group that we can write off. They just need a chance," said Mark Edwards, executive director of the coalition of businesses, advocacy groups, policy experts and nonprofit organizations dedicated to increasing economic mobility. "The tendency is to see them as lost souls and see them as unsavable. They are not."

But changing the dynamic is not going to be easy.

The coalition also finds that 49 states have seen an increase in the number of families living in poverty and 45 states have seen household median incomes fall in the last year. The dour report underscores the challenges young adults face now and foretell challenges they are likely to face as they get older.

A young person's community is often closely tied to his or her success. The Opportunity Nation report tracked 16 factors — Internet access, college graduation rates, income inequality and public safety among them — and identified states that were doing well for its young people.

Topping the list of supportive states are Vermont, Minnesota and North Dakota. At the bottom? Nevada, Mississippi and New Mexico.

"Their destiny is too often determined by their ZIP code," said Charlie Mangiardi, who works with Year Up, a nonprofit that trains young adults for careers and helps them find jobs.

"We have the supply. We don't have a lack of young people who need this opportunity," Mangiardi added.

Just look at some of the nation's largest cities. Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Riverside, Calif., all have more than 100,000 idle youth, the Opportunity Nation report found.

"Often times they lack the social capital in life," Mangiardi said. "There's a whole pool of talent that is motivated, loyal and hardworking." They just can't get through an employer's door, he added.

That's why Year Up spends a year working with high school graduates to teach them career skills such as computer programming or equipment repair they can use when the program ends. It also includes life coaching so they can learn skills such as time management. More than 4,500 young adults from urban areas have completed the program and 84 percent of them have found work.

But it's a far tougher time for other young people.

In Mississippi and West Virginia, 1 in 5 young people are idle — higher than their older neighbors. Mississippi has an overall unemployment rate of 8 percent, while West Virginia posts about 7 percent. Like most states, they saw their unemployment rate fall since 2011, but researchers caution that shift could come from fewer residents looking for work and from more who had simply given up their search for jobs.

And it's not as though the challenges emerge from nowhere. Quality early childhood programs help students from poor families overcome societal hurdles, and on-time high school graduation rates often follow quality schools — other factors Opportunity Nation examined in its report.

"A lot of times we don't want to look at data because we don't want to be depressed," said Rob Denson, president of Des Moines Area Community College in Iowa.

But it's an uncomfortable reality that needs to be addressed, he said.

Using previous years' reports from Opportunity Nation, Denson helped rally community organizations in his city to develop a pilot program to help students as young as 14 find summer work.

"When we got the index, it really allowed us to use it as a rallying point for all of the community-based organizations we work with to say, 'Look, this is what the world sees when they look at Iowa,'" he said.

Starting next summer, Des Moines students will be placed in paying jobs, part of a citywide collaboration to help its urban communities. It will help older adults, as well, because crime rates are expected to fall, he said.

"If they're not in school or at work," Denson said, "they're not usually doing something positive."

___

Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott

6 million youths with no school or work

A study shows that 15 percent of Americans aged 16-24 are missing a crucial window in life.Destiny 'determined by their ZIP code'