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Kenya has long been an African success story, a place that's been relatively stable, peaceful and prosperous despite being in a neighborhood rocked by major disasters for decades.

There's been endless civil war in Somalia, genocide in Rwanda and famine in Ethiopia. Yet these calamities have, by and large, not spilled over to Kenya, which has been the crossroads of East Africa, serving as a business, transportation and tourist hub.

This also explains why an upscale mall in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, was an ideal target for al-Shabab, the Somali militia with ties to al-Qaida.

"Kenya is full of Western interests and if al-Qaida wants to target America, which is obviously its reason for being, Kenya is the place to be," Bronwyn Burton of the Atlantic Council told NPR's Morning Edition.

"They would much rather be operating in Nairobi, where they can hurt more people and they can make more progress in their jihad than they could ever hope to accomplish in Mogadishu," Burton says.

Kenya has always been one of the most outward-looking African countries with its wide-ranging links to the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

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The captain of the Costa Concordia says the helmsman of the ill-fated cruise liner failed to properly execute a last-minute corrective maneuver that could have kept the massive vessel off a rocky shoal near the coast of Tuscany.

Capt. Francesco Schettino, who is charged with manslaughter in the deaths of 32 people aboard the ship, which ran aground on Jan. 13, 2012, is also accused of abandoning the liner's 4,200 passengers and crew on the night of the wreck.

The Costa Concordia took on water and capsized after hitting a reef after Schettino ordered a course change to bring the vessel in close to the island of Giglio, allegedly so passengers could get a better view of its brilliant lights. The captain has said that the reef was not marked on his charts.

He testified that when he realized the ship's peril, he ordered the helmsman to steer left but that he steered right instead.

"If it weren't for the helmsman's error, to not position the rudder to the left ... the swerve [toward the reef] and the collision wouldn't have happened," Schettino said, according to The Associated Press. The AP reports:

"Investigators have said language problems between the Italian captain and the Indonesian-born helmsman may have played a role in the botched maneuver. A maritime expert, however, told the court that although the helmsman was slow to react and had indeed erred, in the end it didn't matter."

" 'The helmsman was 13 seconds late in executing the maneuver, but the crash would have happened anyway,' Italian naval Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone said Monday."

Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise operator, reported a third quarter profit nearly a third lower than a year ago following a series of embarrassing and deadly mishaps involving its ships.

Carnival turned a $934 million profit for the period June through August, down 30 percent from the same quarter in 2012.

The company owns several cruise lines, including Carnival, Holland America, Princess and Costa, whose Costa Concordia liner wrecked on the Tuscan coast last year, killing 32 people. Carnival also has had its share of problems, including fires and power outages at sea that became public relations disasters for the parent company.

Carnival Chairman Micky Arison acknowledged Tuesday that it could take as long as three years for the company's brand and reputation to rebound from the Costa Concordia wreck and other problems.

"There are a lot of great brands that have had setbacks, and they've recovered ... but the economic situation in southern Europe isn't helping," Arison said at a news conference Tuesday in London, according to Reuters.

"Costa is already beginning to recover, studies of acceptance suggest it [the brand] has recovered nicely," Arison said, according to the news agency. He added that it would take "two to three years" to get the brand back to where it was.

Arison's comments come a week after the completion of a massive operation to right the capsized Costa Corcordia, which had been lying on its side since the accident in January. The liner's captain is on trial in Italy on charges of manslaughter and abandoning his stricken vessel.

Testifying on Monday, Capt. Francesco Schettino blamed the ship's helmsman for steering the wrong way as he tried unsuccessfully to avoid hitting a reef off the coast of the island of Giglio.

On Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, Schettino got "some support during his trial from an unexpected corner: representatives of the tragedy's many victims."

" 'Schettino is the only defendant, but he's not the only one responsible,' said Daniele Bocciolini, a lawyer for several survivors in a civil suit attached to the criminal trial, according to the news agency. 'He's not responsible for the lifeboats that couldn't be launched nor for the emergency generators' that failed."

No doubt most of you reading this post have looked at Yelp or Google+ Local to check the user reviews before you tried that fish store, bakery or even dentist. On occasion, you may have wondered if some of those reviews were too good to be true.

It turns out that some of them were.

New York's attorney general revealed the results of a yearlong investigation into the business of fake reviews. Eric T. Schneiderman announced Monday that 19 companies that engaged in the practice will stop and pay fines between $2,500 and $100,000, for a total of more than $350,000 in penalties.

Schneiderman said his office used undercover agents. One agent, posing as the owner of a yogurt shop in Brooklyn, called up search engine optimization companies and asked for help in combating negative reviews on consumer websites. In many cases, the agent was told that they would write fake positive reviews for a fee.

One of the reputation companies required its freelancers to have an established Yelp account more than three months old, and at least 15 reviews and 10 Yelp friends. The jobs paid the false writers — who lived as far away as Bangladesh and the Philippines — between $1 and $10 per review.

The investigation also uncovered businesses that did their own reputation management. For example, US Coachways, a charter bus company on Staten Island, had its employees write positive reviews and offered $50 gift certificates to customers who would do the same — without requiring those customers to reveal the gift.

Ratings website Yelp says it welcomed the crackdown. However, the company has also been accused of manipulating reviews on its site by merchants who claim Yelp offered to move positive feedback closer to the top of the page for a payment. Yelp denies this.

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