A United Nations envoy on Tuesday urged Eritrea to release nearly 100 000 tonnes of food aid feared to be rotting in warehouses as he appealed for donors to meet an urgent appeal to assist drought-hit East Africa. ”The warehouses are closed and the government has the keys,” he told reporters.
On almost any day, at almost any time, children dressed in rags with bottles filled with glue pressed to their faces stake out the major intersections of Kenya’s capital. No one is sure how many children live on the streets of this city of three million, but they certainly number in the tens of thousands.
A group of alleged Somali pirates captured by the United States navy in March have been freed and returned home to lawless Somalia after the US declined to prosecute them, officials said on Tuesday. Ten of the 12 suspected pirates detained on March 18 after firing on US warships in the Indian Ocean off the Somali coast have been handed over to the International Committee for the Red Cross.
The dark clouds threaten a downpour. Already, light showers have started. But Margaret Wangui, her two-year-old daughter strapped tightly to her back, is not running away from the rains. She is fleeing the city council askaris (guards) who are cracking down on hawkers.
Minibus taxis, referred to as ”matatus”, have long been a ubiquitous feature of the Kenyan landscape, providing transport in cities — and linking urban and rural areas. But a revolution is under way in western Kenya: bicycle taxis are replacing motorised vehicles, their passengers perched on padded seats positioned above the back wheel.
Kenyan security forces on Wednesday fought Ethiopian gunmen along the increasingly restive border between the two countries where drought has fuelled inter-clan and tribal clashes and heightened tensions. At least one person, a Kenyan officer, was wounded in the gun battle that occurred when a joint team of Kenyan army, police and border patrol encountered an armed gang that had crossed the border from southern Ethiopia.
British charity Oxfam International on Thursday launched its biggest food-crisis aid appeal to date, asking for more than -million to save millions in drought-hit East Africa. The appeal for the funds, the organisation’s largest single call for donations to avert a food crisis in its 60-year history, came as the United Nations warned that recent rains across the region were not enough to alleviate suffering.
At least 14 people were killed on Monday when a Kenyan military plane carrying government officials and several lawmakers crashed near a game park in central Kenya, authorities said. ”Fourteen people died in the crash and we have yet to get information on the others,” Major General Paul Opiyo told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Kenyan authorities said on Friday they had arrested 14 suspected wildlife poachers, including seven Italians, and seized large amounts of ivory and other illegal animal trophies. In three separate raids this month, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said its rangers had recovered more than 160kg of elephant tusks and processed ivory.
Recent brief but heavy rains in drought-hit parts of Kenya threaten to worsen the already fragile food situation, with flooding displacing thousands. British charity Oxfam International and the Kenya Red Cross Society said the rains will not end the drought and that an urgent boost in the humanitarian aid was still critical to avert disaster.
Kenyan authorities simulated a major plane crash at Nairobi’s main airport on Thursday, causing confusion after international reports that a serious accident had occurred. The exercise — plans for which had been announced last month — was aimed at giving emergency workers experience in dealing with a large-scale disaster, but officials gave initial conflicting reports about the alleged accident.
A Kenyan court on Wednesday charged five teenage boys with rape in connection with an incident in which as many as 10 young girls were sexually assaulted outside a high school last month. The five suspects, arrested on March 29 after three of the alleged victims identified them as their attackers, pleaded not guilty to rape and indecent assault charges.
More than a month has passed since authorities in Kenya pledged a fresh drive against high-level graft in the corruption-riddled East African country, but no assets have been seized, as promised. The first group of high-profile Kenyans suspected of looting public coffers recently appeared in court on related charges.
Kenyan authorities on Friday destroyed about 1,2 tonnes of cocaine seized in 2004, a record haul that had become the subject of corruption and evidence-tampering allegations. The drugs were incinerated at a medical research facility in Nairobi under tight security following a March 21 court order issued on the request of the director of public prosecution Keraiko Tobiko.
Bus driver Peter Mwathi pulls some dirty bank notes from his shirt pocket and slides them into the hand of a police offer who has pulled him over. An untrained eye would have missed the transaction, which looks like a friendly handshake, but Kenyans are used to kickbacks and bribes. A few passengers murmur and grumble.
Misoprostol. It’s not exactly a household name as far as drugs are concerned; however, it has the potential to improve — and even save — thousands of women’s lives in Kenya. This medication is one of a number of drugs that can be used to induce abortion, in a procedure that has come to be known as ”medical abortion”, or ”abortion by pill”.
The Kenyan government said on Thursday it had suspended the country’s central-bank governor, who last week was charged with four counts of abuse of office in a corruption scandal. Government spokesperson Alfred Mutua said Central Bank of Kenya chief Andrew Mullei had been formally suspended by President Mwai Kibaki on Wednesday pending his trial.
At least 10 girls were raped when a gang of men attacked hundreds of students who were demonstrating against a school administration in central Kenya over the weekend, police said on Tuesday. ”The incident happened when students, who were protesting at night, were attacked,” said national police spokesperson Jaspher Ombati.
A cholera outbreak has killed at least 238 people and infected some 8 923 others in the past three months in southern Sudan, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said. Although the outbreak has been contained in two main southern towns, it has spread to other areas, the United Nations said in a statement on Wednesday.
Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on Monday said he was determined to clinch lasting peace in Darfur and renewed his rejection of foreign intervention in the war-torn western region. We reiterate our determination and keenness to achieve a lasting and comprehensive peace in Darfur through direct negotiations with the rebels.
East African leaders on Monday called for a combined regional effort to combat a searing drought that has put millions of people on the verge of starvation. The outgoing Inter-Governmental Authority on Development chairperson, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, called for insurance for people affected by famine.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Monday urged neighbouring states Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to help decimate insurgents from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that has waged a brutal war in the country’s northern region.
A former intelligence chief and three other former high-ranking Kenyan officials suspected of involvement in Kenya’s biggest financial scandal were brought to a magistrate’s court on Friday, but their lawyers prevented them from entering a plea. President Mwai Kibaki’s administration has initiated fresh prosecutions in the Goldenberg affair.
Kenya’s attorney general recently signalled his willingness to tackle the country’s biggest corruption scandal by charging five men, including the former governor of the central bank, with fraud. The ”Goldenberg” scandal was made public 14 years ago and cost Kenyan taxpayers the equivalent of -million.
As famine continues to ravage parts of Kenya, a non-governmental organisation is urging authorities to reduce the cost of basic food stuffs, particularly maize flour — the staple food. A survey by the group, Bunge la Mwananchi, has indicated that while food is for sale in affected areas, it is too expensive for the people living there.
Groups in Kenya that include politicians and activists say they will present plans to complete a review process aimed at providing a new Constitution for the East African country. This follows their dismissal of the February 24 appointment of a presidential committee to jump-start the constitutional review.
A meeting of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union opened in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Friday to discuss the proposed transfer of the pan-African body’s peacekeeping force in Sudan’s western Darfur region to the United Nations, officials said.
Sudan’s government warned on Wednesday that deploying a United Nations force to the war-torn western Darfur region risks worsening conflict there and eroding the African Union’s (AU) mandate to intervene in other trouble spots in the continent.
Thousands of angry Kenyans, including prominent opposition politicians, paraded through the country’s main cities on Tuesday protesting a heavy-handed police raid on the second largest media group. ”We are demonstrating in order to protect press freedom in Kenya. Press freedom in Kenya is under siege,” said former roads minister Raila Odinga.
The Kenyan government on Monday blamed increasing incidents of poaching and illegal trade in bush meat in the country on a searing drought that has put millions of people across East Africa at risk of famine. As the government and relief agencies scramble to save human populations from starvation, wildlife authorities have warned that poachers are targeting weakened wildlife.
The Kenyan media group whose premises were raided last week by police moved to the high court on Monday seeking to declare the attack and seizure of its property unconstitutional, according to court papers. Last week, armed policemen stormed the group, Kenya’s second-biggest media organisation, temporarily shutting down its television station, damaging its printing press and burning newspapers
The Ethiopian Ministry of Health has announced that it will provide free anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for 58 000 HIV-positive people until the beginning of July. The ministry said on Friday that some 23 000 people had already benefited from free ART provision since January 2005.