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/ 2 September 2005
A ship carrying food aid for Somali tsunami victims remains in the hands of Somali pirates after more than two months, a spokesperson for the United Nations World Food Programme said on Friday in Nairobi. ”We received a request through a third party to change the port of discharge,” he said.
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/ 1 September 2005
Illegal fishing off Somalia’s coast has reached proportions of about -million annually, a United Nations official said on Thursday in Nairobi. ”It is mostly foreign vessels but we don’t know who they are,” said Ghanim Alnajjar, the UN’s independent expert on the situation of human rights in Somalia.
The European Union on Tuesday warned Somalia’s bickering leaders to resolve a long-running and deepening dispute over the seat of the lawless nation’s transitional government or lose out on much-needed aid. ”The leaders have some differences that are not fully encouraging aid to Somalia,” British envoy David Bell told a meeting of EU diplomats.
A Kenyan court in Narok on Thursday charged two men with capital offenses in a brazen armed attack on a group of Japanese, South African and United States tourists in the country’s famed Maasai Mara game reserve this week. The pair, who were escorted into the courtroom under tight security, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The Land Rover bounced down a yellow dirt track, carrying three khaki-clad European tourists streaked with sweat, exhilarated after an elephant-spotting expedition. By the roadside, farmers sitting on fallen tree trunks complained that a herd of elephants had broken through electric fences yet again, wreaking havoc among their plots of cassava and fruit trees.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomed a cash donation from Germany for its aid operation in Mali on Tuesday. The German ministry for economic cooperation donated €500 000 (R3,9-million) for urgently needed food aid for the people in the West African country, according to a WFP statement.
Two Japanese tourists were wounded and three others were robbed along with two South Africans when an armed gang hijacked a pair of safari vans in Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara game reserve, police said on Tuesday. Seven men armed with a rifle, clubs and machetes attacked the tourists on Monday evening as they were returning from a game drive.
The Kenya Wildlife Service will relocate 400 elephants to Kenya’s largest national park, from a smaller national reserve in the country’s south-east that has too many elephants, a spokesperson said on Monday. The ,2-million exercise will begin on Thursday and involve transporting elephants more than 350km.
A seemingly endless cycle of extreme violence in lawless Somalia is having a ”catastrophic” effect on the war-shattered nation’s civilian population, the international charity Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) said on Monday. ”The frightening fact is that Somalia is officially not even at war,” MSF said.
A Kenyan Cabinet minister has made an outspoken attack on white settlers, telling a public rally that farmers of British origin ”will have to go away”, in the latest spat in a feud with the British government over allegations of corruption. Transport Minister Chris Murungaru, who launched the attack at a public rally at the weekend, was banned from travelling to Britain last month.
African conservationists on Thursday dismissed with contempt a suggestion by United States scientists that the best way to save the planet’s large wild mammals, most of them native to Africa, is to build a huge nature preserve in the midwest United States.
Africa’s demand for two permanent veto-wielding seats on an expanded United Nations Security Council is non-negotiable and must be met if the world is serious about improving conditions on the continent, Kenya said on Thursday. Kenya said Security Council expansion as part of broader UN reform is essential.
Somalia’s influential parliamentary speaker said on Wednesday he is working to resolve a crisis over the seat of the lawless country’s transitional government and expressed confidence it will not be permanent. Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden said the disagreement is only ”political” and perhaps to be expected.
A boat carrying 102 people capsized in northeastern Nigeria with all passengers feared dead, national media reported on Tuesday. Recent heavy rains have caused flooding and swollen rivers in most parts of the populous West African nation.
The United Nations warned on Tuesday of an explosion of HIV/Aids in lawless Somalia unless steps are taken quickly to stop the spread of the disease and reduce risk factors. The UN’s monthly report said infection rates were relatively low in areas where testing has been done compared to other parts of Africa, but could rise dramatically.
The United States and 11 African nations on Monday formally opened a regional emergency response center in Nairobi, Kenya, to improve East and Central Africa’s capacity to deal with natural disasters and terrorist attacks. It is part of a US-funded series of symposia aimed at helping African countries better respond to crises.
Kenya’s justice minister has admitted his government is losing the fight against corruption and vowed a ”ruthless” anti-graft war in a stark admission of long-standing donor complaints, in remarks published on Wednesday that were a rare acknowledgement of rampant official malfeasance and failing efforts to curb such abuses.
At least three of the four suspects in the July 21 attempted bombings on the London subway and a bus were born in East Africa, where al-Qaeda-linked groups still operate and may be growing in strength, according to a new assessment by counterterrorism experts.
Following a day of deadly riots in the streets of Khartoum sparked by the death in a helicopter crash of former rebel leader John Garang, Sudan on Tuesday was plunged back into uncertainty.
Armed robbers killed a British hotelier and a Kenyan truck driver in a popular tourist area in central Kenya, police said on Wednesday. One of the robbers was also shot and killed. The gang took a watchman hostage late on Tuesday at the luxury Crater Lake Lodge, 90km northeast of Nairobi, and then shot and killed owner John Gordon.
Clan elders in southern Ethiopia have agreed to hand over suspects believed to have taken part in a village massacre in northern Kenya early this month, sparking reprisal attacks that left at least 82 people dead, Kenyan police said on Wednesday. They said Kenyan officials had been negotiating with Ethiopian authorities in a bid to arrest bandits from the Borana clan.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Tuesday launched a countrywide programme to combat malaria, the top killer of pregnant women and children under the age of five in the East African nation. The National Malaria Programme includes distribution of free insecticide-treated nets, treatment and developing strategies to combat the disease.
Civil society groups in Kenya have set their sights on an upcoming referendum in a bid to prevent the government from pushing through an altered version of the country’s draft Constitution. This comes after Parliament approved the amended draft at midnight last Thursday, by a vote of 102 to 61.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Friday insisted a draft Constitution pushed through Parliament by his ruling coalition will improve Kenya, though protesters who clashed with police as lawmakers debated the charter complain it gives him too much power. Lawmakers voted 102 to 61 to approve the draft Constitution.
Condoms are inventions by mzungus (whites) and should therefore be banned, a Kenyan MP said on Thursday. Ramadhan Kajembe, MP for the Changamwe district, said in Parliament that not only are condoms ”mzungu things” but they are also painful to put on.
Kenyan security forces shot and killed 18 cattle raiders from neighbouring Uganda after the rustlers raided a village in northern Kenya, slaying one person, police said on Thursday. Raiders from the Karamojong tribe of Uganda attacked cattle herders from the Turkana of Kenya on Wednesday in the village of Lokiriama, about 735km north of Nairobi.
Kenya has its fair share of South Africans and when one has a craving for boerewors, koeksisters and melktert, one can head straight for Gail’s Kitchen on the outskirts of Nairobi. South African-born Gail Unsworth says she has trained a team of Kenyans to make food ”the South African way”.
At least 23 people were killed and 20 injured when a bus and tractor-trailer collided near Kenya’s southern port of Mombasa, police and hospital officials said on Tuesday. The vehicles, which were travelling in the same direction along the main road from Nairobi to Mombasa, crashed at around 4am.
Rwandan Hutu rebels operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tuesday denied reports from the United Nations that UN peacekeepers destroyed six of their bases in the eastern DRC last week. ”We are still controlling our positions,” said a spokesperson for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
At least 22 people were killed and 21 injured when a bus and tractor-trailer collided near Kenya’s southern port of Mombasa, police and hospital officials said on Tuesday. The vehicles, which were travelling in the same direction along the main road from Nairobi to Mombasa, crashed at about 4am local time near the Wangala trading post.
Kenya has launched a massive security operation in the northern region, where a massacre and reprisal attacks have left at least 77 people dead this week, officials said on Friday, as the Red Cross appealed for humanitarian aid for displaced people.
A leading international agricultural policy group on Thursday urged African nations to drop opposition to biotechnology crop research and genetically modified foods, saying such a step could dramatically improve food security on the impoverished continent.