Somali President names new PM

 New Somali PM:Abdi Farah

Somalia's President on Saturday named Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid, a businessman as the country's new Prime Minister nearly a month after the president was elected.

At a joint news conference in the Somali capital Mogadishu, the Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud made the announcement of Saaid's nomination. Saaid is a newcomer to Somalia politics and is expected to form a cabinet within the next few weeks in consultation with President and various other parties , as the new Somali government like its predecessors has to accommodate the key clans of the war-torn country. The new prime minister, after he forms his cabinet, will ask the Somali parliament to conduct a vote of confidence on the ministerial lineup he presents to lawmakers.

The Somali parliament which was formed after lengthy negotiations between various Somali clans and the legislature in turn voted to elect Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud as Somalia's president, defeating the incumbent Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. Somalia's constituent assembly endorsed a provincial constitution in August paving the way for the ending of the decade- long transitional period the country has been through. With the naming of the new Prime Minister the country has completed the three top posts of the president, the speaker of parliament and the prime minister.  Somalia has been without a central government for more than two decades after the overthrow of the former ruler Mohamed Siyad Barre in 1991.
Meanwhile Algeria's former president Chadli Bendjedid died of cancer on Saturday, the official APS news agency reported.
APS quoted Bendjedid's family as saying that the ex-president passed away Saturday in Algiers at the age of 83 years old, according to the report. Suffering from cancer, the former president was reportedly hospitalized in a military hospital in Ain-Naadja in Algiers earlier this week. Elected as president in 1979, Bendjedid was forced to step down in January 1992, when the Algerian military canceled a legislative election result which let Islamists come to power.Bendjedid was the third president of Algeria since the country' s independence in 1962 from France.  (Xinhua)