A strong earthquake hit East Africa on Tuesday, the latest in the region in several days, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said. The USGS said the quake struck in northern Tanzania, 167km from the western town of Arusha, and measured 6,1 on the Richter scale of magnitude.
Africa needs a ”green revolution” to double agricultural output and end chronic food insecurity in the world’s poorest continent, former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan said on Monday. The former top diplomat is the chairperson of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, set up last year with a -million grant.
Crime and violence are at crisis levels in Kenya in the build-up to elections as gangs terrorise the population and ”trigger-happy” police respond with impunity, human rights groups said on Wednesday. The Kenya Human Rights Network said 300 criminals, police officers, victims of land clashes and suspected members of a banned sect were killed in the last six months.
Five people were killed in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, police said on Tuesday, in a widening crackdown on a criminal gang blamed for a horrifying spate of murders and beheadings. The five were shot dead and two pistols recovered after carjacking and robbery incidents in the capital’s Ngong and Balozi suburbs overnight, police said.
Politicians from leading parties and prominent human rights activists all seem to agree that the time has come for Kenya to abolish capital punishment. But as they continue to talk, courts continue to pass down death sentences, swelling the numbers on death row. On June 21, Justice and Constitutional Affairs Assistant Minister Danson Mungatana told journalists here that the government is committed to abolishing the death penalty.
Kenya police on Monday said they had killed eight suspected members of a gang blamed for a spate of murders and beheadings, as part of a widening crackdown. Once a religious group of dreadlocked youths who embraced traditional rituals, the politically linked Mungiki sect has fractured into a gang notorious for criminal activities.
After a three-month break the trial of a British aristocrat charged with murder in the shooting of a trespasser on his ancestral ranch resumed in Nairobi on Wednesday. Thomas Cholmondeley, son of the fifth Baron Delamere and great-grandson of Kenya’s most prominent early settler, is charged with killing poacher Robert Njoya in May 2006.
A small plane flying to Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve crashed on Tuesday and three people were killed, a tour operator said. The dead were two passengers on a safari holiday, both Germans living in Switzerland, and the Kenyan pilot, said Will Jones, managing director of British-based tour operator Journeys by Design.
Three United Nations agencies on Tuesday appealed for -million in donations to combat a malnutrition crisis at two major Kenyan refugee camps. ”The malnutrition crisis that we are witnessing … is the cumulative effect of years of recurrent budgetary shortfalls,” Eddie Gedalof from the Kenya office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said.
Kenya is trying to clamp down on a sect, the Mungiki, accused of occultist rituals and beheadings, but which is also seen as a threat to stability. Analysts say the Mungiki is more of an organised criminal gang with political ties than a sect and they warn that such groups could multiply in the crime-prone country.
Kenya’s annual inflation rose to 11,1% in June from 6,3% in May on the back of price increases in food, alcohol and tobacco, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. However, underlying inflation that excludes food prices fell to 5,2% from 5,7% in May.
Gunmen killed four people in Nairobi’s largest slum, raising fears of a possible raid by a dreaded sect blamed for a string of murders and beheadings, police said on Thursday. Police commander Herbert Khaemba said the gunmen attacked Kibera slums, home to at least 800Â 000 people, and killed four after a botched robbery attempt.
A Kenyan woman hacked off her four-year-old son’s head on Wednesday, apparently furious that the young child had mislaid a 10-shilling (15 United States cents) coin, police and witnesses said. Witnesses said the 35-year-old mother beheaded her child with a machete in the Gatundu region, about 30km north-west of the capital, Nairobi.
The World Bank has approved an -million credit to help Kenya in its fight against Aids, which the government says kills hundreds of people daily. The money will be used to improve governance in the state-run National Aids Control Council, which coordinates activities of NGOs involved in the fight against Aids. Some of the money will also be given as grants to NGOs.
Kenyan police on Tuesday said they had shot dead at least 25 suspected members of the Mungiki criminal gang since last week, after at least 13 people were killed in a surge of violence blamed on the group. Thursday’s conviction of a former Mungiki leader on weapons charges ended a brief lull in the slaughter.
Kenyan police on Tuesday killed two suspected members of a banned sect blamed for a string of recent murders and beheadings in a mounting crackdown across the East African nation. Police Commander Tito Kilonzo said officers trailed suspected Mungiki gang members from the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi.
Rebels in Ethiopia’s remote eastern Somali region accused the government on Monday of using war planes to bomb three villages, killing about 40 people, in an escalating offensive against the insurgents. The government said it had the Ogaden National Liberation Front ”on the run”, but denied using planes during fighting in the poor and arid region.
Lasting peace in Sudan will not be possible unless the fractious country takes serious steps to address alarming environmental woes, said a United Nations report published on Friday. Decades of war have devastated Africa’s largest country and fresh competition for its resources continue to fuel conflict, said the report.
Eleven people were killed in and around the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, during a surge in violence overnight, including two people found beheaded and eight killed in a shootout, police said on Friday. Three people — including the two who were beheaded — were found slain in Banana Hill on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Kenya is set to receive oil from Libya at preferential rates according to a bilateral agreement signed earlier this month between the leaders of the two countries. Insiders in the oil industry say this makes it likely that Kenya will award the contract for the establishment of a petroleum facility of $45-million to a Libya-connected investor.
A Kenyan court on Thursday jailed the former leader of a banned sect blamed for a string of beheadings and murders in recent months, judicial sources said. Amid a nationwide crackdown on the Mungiki gang, Nairobi principal magistrate Rosemary Mutoka slapped a five-year prison sentence on Maina Njenga for illegal possession of arms.
Kenyan police arrested 5 000 people in a crackdown on a banned sect blamed for grisly murders, local media reported on Wednesday. Police swooped into Nairobi’s Mathare slum after the killings and subsequent beheadings of at least half a dozen people by the outlawed Mungiki sect.
Last year was one of the worst on record for refugees and the crisis is deepening in 2007 thanks to conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan’s Darfur region. But the accelerating return of refugees to their homes in south Sudan in 2007 — some after more than two decades — is one bright spot in the otherwise bad year.
The chief prosecutor of the Rwanda genocide court has requested that the cases of two fugitives indicted by the tribunal be transferred to European countries, where they are believed to be hiding, officials said on Monday. The cases of Wenceslas Munyeshyaka and Laurent Bucyibaruta had been sealed by the court until late last week.
Two Kenyan police officers believed to have been kidnapped by Islamist fighters have been found murdered on the border with Somalia, police said on Thursday. ”At 7.30am [local time] this morning, the two officers were found murdered on a hill about 500m inside Kenya,” Kenya police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe said.
Kenyan police said on Tuesday they had arrested three people following a suspected suicide bombing the day before that killed at least one person and wounded dozens in the capital, Nairobi. The rush-hour explosion on Monday occurred a few hundred metres from where a truck bomb ripped through the former US embassy in 1998.
Rights group Amnesty International condemned Kenyan police on Tuesday for the execution-style killing of more than 30 people in last week’s crackdown on the deadly Mungiki gang in a Nairobi slum. Hundreds of police officers went into the Mathare shanty-town on two raids, shooting dead at least 33 people.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Monday called for urgent action to save Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest fresh-water lake, which is facing decline in water levels due to human activities. The lake, which provides livelihoods for about 30-million people in the shoreline countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, has suffered a dramatic fall in water levels since 2003.
A blast in central Nairobi killed at least one person on Monday and police on the scene said they believed it could have been a suicide bombing. Police commissioner Hussein Ali said five or six other people were critically injured after the explosion outside the Ambassadeur hotel in the central business district.
Eyeing his cellphone with a mixture of suspicion and amazement, Paul Kangethe reads and rereads the SMS he has just received. ”I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Kangethe says of the alert that instructs him to report to the nearest cellphone shop to retrieve money his brother-in-law sent him just moments ago. Kangethe is one of more than 65 000 registered users of M-Pesa, a mobile money-transfer system.
Hundreds of people carrying their possessions in makeshift carts fled on Friday from Kenya’s Mathare slum, where at least 33 people have died in a police crackdown on Kenya’s deadly Mungiki gang. At least 500 police officers tore through the shantytown in Nairobi on Thursday, shooting dead at least 11 people.
Does electronic learning (e-learning) threaten to displace the teacher? This question emerged at an international conference held in Nairobi last week, attended by 1Â 400 people from 88 countries. The latest in information communication technology (ICT) with a focus on education, training and development was showcased.