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/ 27 September 2006
A rally car driver described on Wednesday how he saw the great-grandson of Kenya’s most famous white settler shoot dead a black Kenyan ”by mistake” in a trial that has awakened animosities from colonial times. Thomas Cholmondeley has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Robert Njoya, a local stonemason he accuses of poaching on his land.
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/ 26 September 2006
The growing tide of Somalis fleeing conflict at home has raised the number of refugees in Kenya to the highest for a decade and is threatening to exhaust food aid stocks, the United Nations warned on Tuesday. About 24 000 people have entered the Dadaab camps in northern Kenya since the start of the year, the UN World Food Programme said.
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/ 25 September 2006
Kenya’s most famous white farmer went on trial for murder on Monday accused of shooting dead a black Kenyan for poaching on his land. Thomas Cholmondeley — 38-year-old great grandson of Lord Delamere, one of the original British settlers in Kenya — has pleaded ”not guilty” to the murder of Robert Njoya, a local stonemason he accuses of hunting animals on his land.
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/ 18 September 2006
An elderly nun who was gunned down at the hospital where she worked in Somalia’s capital was ”specifically targeted before being executed by gunmen lying in wait”, a hospital official said on Monday. Willy Huber, regional director of the Austrian-funded hospital where 65-year-old Sister Leonella had worked for four years, said the killing was not random.
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/ 11 September 2006
In a field tucked away in a remote corner of south-west Kenya, perhaps the most unusual and poignant September 11 condolence gift to the United States grazes contentedly on long grass. Here in the heart of Maasailand, a small herd of cows ruminates, unaware they have forged a powerful symbolic bond between an isolated tribal community and the world’s last superpower.
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/ 8 September 2006
With dozens, if not hundreds, of organisations likely to attend next year’s World Social Forum — and almost as many issues clamouring to be addressed there — nailing down a programme for the January 20 to 25 event promises to be a daunting task. Nonetheless, organisers of the event are starting to do just that.
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/ 7 September 2006
Hundreds of patients are forcibly held in Burundi’s hospitals — sometimes for months — over unpaid bills and many have to sell prized land or cattle to leave, a human rights report said on Thursday. Health care for mothers and children under five is free in the tiny Central African country whose shattered economy is emerging from more than a decade of ethnic conflict.
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/ 7 September 2006
Long viewed as the most dangerous place to fly, Africa is pushing hard to clean up its image and some well-managed airlines are taking advantage of new opportunities to turn in impressive profits. Africa has the highest rate of aircraft accidents in the world despite the fact that it accounts for just 4,5% of global traffic. It recorded 30% of all air transport accidents between 1996 and last year.
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/ 4 September 2006
Anarchic Somalia has confounded United States foreign policy once again, leaving Washington struggling to find a coherent approach to a state whose internal turmoil threatens to destabilise the Horn of Africa. The Bush administration appears to have realised that its ”one-size-fits-all” approach to countering global terrorist threats failed in Somalia.
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/ 4 September 2006
The global debate between scientists and conservative Christians over evolution has hit Kenya, where an exhibit of one of the world’s finest collections of early hominid fossils is under threat. As the famed National Museum of Kenya prepares to reopen next year after massive, European Union-funded renovations, evangelicals are demanding the display be removed or at least shunted to a less prominent location.
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/ 1 September 2006
A vicious cycle of drought and floods is continuing to bring death and misery to millions of impoverished people across East Africa, the United Nations said on Friday. After months of a scorching killer drought that threatened more than 11-million mainly rural peasants and pastoralists with starvation, heavy rains have pounded the region, causing deadly flash floods in six countries, it said.
Kenyan wildlife rangers in choppers killed a pair of rogue elephants this week after a series of fatal attacks on people in incidents highlighting growing human-animal conflict, officials said on Thursday. The rampaging bulls, blamed by locals for leading larger groups of jumbos onto farms to raid crops, were shot dead on Sunday and Wednesday.
Somalia’s weak, United Nations-backed transitional government will meet its Islamic rivals this week in Sudan in an effort to ease tensions after the Islamists took over of much of the country’s south, an Arab League official said. The talks will open with a ceremony on Friday.
Eritrean police have arrested several United Nations peacekeepers who allegedly were trying to smuggle people out of Eritrea, the information ministry said. An unspecified number of staff from the UN’s Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea were seized as they tried to cross into arch-rival Ethiopia, said Tuesday’s statement on the Eritrean information ministry website.
The leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia met on Tuesday to ease mounting tensions along their border where at least 100 people have been killed in tribal attacks over the past three months. In addition, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and visiting Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles al-Zenawi were discussing prospects for restoring stability in their neighbour Somalia, officials said.
United States Senator Barack Obama called on Monday for stepped up protection of press freedom and the environment, meeting with embattled Kenyan journalists and Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai. Speaking at Nairobi’s Standard Media Group, Obama offered a pep talk to employees concerned by growing assaults on press freedom.
At least 18 people were killed in northern Kenya during cross-border cattle raids by about 300 armed bandits from Ethiopia, officials said on Monday. Most of the dead were raiders who tried to steal thousands of animals from several villages close to the Ethiopian border, 650km from the capital, Nairobi, they added.
United States Senator Barack Obama, visiting his father’s homeland, praised Kenya’s democratic achievements during a meeting on Friday with President Mwai Kibaki. Obama’s visit — his first since becoming a US senator last year — has dominated the front pages of newspapers and television stations.
Armed bandits raided a luxury safari camp near Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara game reserve early on Tuesday, stealing cash and passports from British and United States tourists staying there, officials said. About six men with AK-47 assault rifles and machetes stormed the Mara Porini Camp in a private conservancy just outside the wildlife-rich reserve shortly after midnight.
”Poke out his eyes! Kick him between the legs!” Karate expert Duncan Bomba yells instructions at 200 Kenyan schoolgirls watching in amazement as he ferociously attacks a colleague posing as a rapist. With their navy and white school uniforms, tightly braided hair and socks pulled up to their knees, two girls coyly attempt the moves as Bomba takes on the role of attacker.
East African defence chiefs expect to have the vanguard of a peacekeeping force for Somalia ready by the end of next month, officials said on Friday, despite fierce objections from powerful Islamists in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation. The first elements of the nearly 7 000-strong regional force are to assemble in late September, the officials said.
A severe humanitarian crisis may erupt this year in Somalia, where insecurity could compound crop failures and leave about 3,6-million people in need of urgent aid, a United Nations agency said on Wednesday. Still battling to recover from the effects of a killer drought that hit East Africa, about 1,8-million Somalis remain dependent on assistance.
World Cup semifinalists Kenya were no match for Bangladesh as the tourists clinched the third and final one-day match by six wickets on Tuesday to win the series 3-0. Medium-pacer Ashrafe Mortaza acted as the chief destroyer of the Kenyan batting line-up, taking 6-26 for a total haul of 13 wickets in the three-match series.
The situation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains as unstable as ever as vote counting continues following landmark elections two weeks ago, with incumbent president Joseph Kabila leading with 53% of the votes counted by Tuesday.
All-rounder Mashrafee Mortaza was the star for Bangladesh as they beat Kenya by two wickets on Sunday to win the one-day series 2-0. Having taken 3-53 in the Kenyan innings, the stylish left-hander returned to hit the winning runs that helped Bangladesh hold off a resurgent Kenyan side buoyed by a tight pace-bowling attack.
An unbeaten partnership of 74 between debutant Forhad Reza and Mohammad Ashraful steered Bangladesh to an emphatic six-wicket win over Kenya in the first one-day international at the Gymkhana club in Nairobi on Saturday. Reza, who ended the match with an unbeaten 34 proved the perfect foil for the experienced right-hander Ashraful as they steadied the Bangladesh innings after a shaky start.
Somalia’s political stand-off may erupt into a region-wide conflict involving al-Qaeda unless its fragile government can bring Islamists into its ranks, a think-tank said on Friday. Foreign states, particularly Ethiopia and Eritrea, must stop supporting the rival factions or risk inflaming the situation, the International Crisis Group said in a report.
About 150 Ethiopian troops, including a senior commander, have deserted the country’s army and escaped to Addis Ababa’s arch-foe nation Eritrea, officials said on Thursday. They said the desertions, which still remained unexplained, were the first to hit the Ethiopian military, but Asmara attributed them to a growing disenchantment with the ruling party.
Africa is mulling setting up a 24-hour television news channel that would portray the continent in positive perspective on the global platform and promote a development agenda, officials said on Wednesday. They said the channel, which will resemble pan-Arabic television al-Jazeera, could be in place by next year.
News outlets across Africa are coming under increasing pressure that restricts their abilities and need defence and support to ensure viability and relevance, media officials said on Tuesday. They were speaking in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, at a pan-African conference on the press.
Eritrea on Friday denied charges it is backing Islamists in Somalia to fight a proxy war with arch-rival Ethiopia, which has sent troops to support the weak Somali government. In a ”working paper” Eritrea rejected as ”groundless” claims it is supplying arms to the Islamists, who have seized Mogadishu and are expanding control in the south of the nation.
Opposition parties in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have denounced parliamentary elections held on Sunday as ”fraudulent” while international observers have given the polls a cautious thumbs-up, according to news reports on Tuesday.