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/ 16 January 2006
Scores of river-dwelling hippos are dying in Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara National Reserve due to a searing drought that threatens the country’s renowned wildlife and has put millions of people across East Africa at risk of famine, officials and witnesses said on Monday.
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/ 13 January 2006
Women and children in arid north-eastern Kenya are begging along roadsides for water and food from motorists, the United Nations’s World Food Programme said on Friday as it appealed to donors to help about five million people affected by drought across East Africa.
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/ 13 January 2006
Kenyan authorities on Friday ordered police to be ruthless with an outlawed cult blamed for murders and violent robberies and held by officials to be attempting to win legitimacy by transforming itself into a political party. "Despite the sect having been banned, there are obvious indications that it is still alive," said National Security Minister John Michuki.
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/ 13 January 2006
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Friday of an impending "humanitarian catastrophe" in the Horn of Africa where millions of people in four countries are facing severe food and water shortages and potential famine.
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/ 12 January 2006
Eritrea on Thursday said it doubted the ”legality and political relevance” of a United States diplomatic mission being sent by Washington to ease simmering border tensions between it and Ethiopia. In recent months, tensions have soared along the border with the United Nations reporting troop movements on both sides.
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/ 12 January 2006
An alleged ex-convict known only as ”Maranda” may have been responsible for the rape of five-year-old Peris Akoth at the beginning of this year, in Kenya. Then again, he may not. However, the case has already become a rallying point for anti-rape campaigners who claim that abuses such as these would be less likely to occur if Kenya had adequate legislation on the books.
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/ 11 January 2006
A searing drought that has put millions of people across East Africa at risk of famine is threatening Kenya’s famed wildlife herds as they stray from protected areas to forage for scarce food and water. Officials said elephants had killed at least two people in the past two weeks around Tsavo, which is home to the largest number of the animals.
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/ 10 January 2006
Kenya on Tuesday lamented its absence from the list of the world’s poorest nations whose debts were cancelled last year by the Group of Eight (G8) rich industrialised countries, saying it was being punished for good financial performance.
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/ 10 January 2006
Eritrea stepped up criticism of the United Nations in its bitter border row with Ethiopia late on Monday, even as the United States moved to ease soaring tensions between the arch-rival neighbours. In a statement, Eritrea accused the world body of showing ”ingrained bias” against it.
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/ 10 January 2006
Promises of aid to Africa must be kept in 2006 or millions of people will die needlessly, the top United Nations adviser on poverty said on Monday, while insisting that every penny must be accounted for to ensure it is used properly. ”2006 has to be the year of real action on the ground,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN Millennium Project and adviser to the UN secretary general.
Kenya’s government on Friday ordered the immediate purchase of ”all available maize in the country” in an emergency bid to stave off deaths from a searing drought that has killed dozens and placed millions at risk of famine across East Africa. The Cabinet described the situation as ”very severe”.
International aid agencies on Thursday stepped up appeals for urgent intervention in drought-hit northern Kenya, warning of mass starvation in the region where at least 40 people have already died of hunger and related illness amid fears of a major famine.
The death toll from hunger and related illness in drought-hit northeastern Kenya has risen to at least 40 as more malnourished children perish, hospital and aid officials said on Wednesday, amid new appeals for urgent help to avert a major famine in the region.
The United States on Tuesday renewed its terrorism warning for US citizens in or thinking of travelling to Kenya in a step likely to anger the Kenyan government which has long fought for the alert to be lifted. In a travel warning the State Department urged ”American citizens to consider carefully the risks of travel to Kenya at this time due to ongoing safety and security concerns”.
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/ 30 December 2005
Micro-credit facilities for men could emerge as a powerful tool to check the alarming increase in cases of violence against women in Kenya. Experts say that with easy access to small loans for income generating activities, men would have less time on their hands to be abusive.
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/ 29 December 2005
Somalia’s transitional president on Thursday appealed for -million in urgent aid for about two million southern Somalis facing severe food and water shortages amid an increasing threat of famine across large swaths of the drought-stricken Horn of Africa.
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/ 27 December 2005
Somalis said prayers in mosques along their Indian Ocean coastline for more than 30 000 survivors left homeless and without livelihoods by the tsunami that traversed the sea from Asia, with many wondering what had happened to promised aid, presidential spokesperson Yusuf Ismail said on Monday.
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/ 26 December 2005
Eager for a dose of winter, Kenyans are stepping out of blazing equatorial heat into the chill of East Africa’s first ice rink for halting forays into sports normally associated with colder climes. Would-be Kenyan hockey stars and figure skaters have been flocking to the Solar Ice Rink in Nairobi since it opened this month.
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/ 22 December 2005
The world’s major powers and the United Nations must move urgently to prevent a new border war between arch-rival Horn of Africa neighbours Ethiopia and Eritrea that could further destabilise the volatile region, a leading international policy institute warned on Thursday.
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/ 15 December 2005
Civil unrest, a recent wave of assassinations and piracy in Somalia are hampering humanitarian access to more than one million vulnerable people in the war-ravaged nation, said members of the aid community at the presentation of the 2006 humanitarian appeal for Somalia on Wednesday.
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/ 15 December 2005
Kenya’s political crisis has deepened, with 22 politicians refusing to accept posts in a reconstituted government, and foreign envoys adding their voices to demands for a snap election. Kenya has been without an effective government since President Mwai Kibaki fired his Cabinet three weeks ago.
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/ 12 December 2005
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Monday urged the East African nation to shun heated political debates and focus on development amid an outcry over his new Cabinet that has sparked a revolt among ministers and deputies. He delivered an address marking the 42nd anniversary of Kenya’s independence from Britain.
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/ 12 December 2005
Sudan’s top leadership, including President Omar el-Beshir, bears responsibility for widespread atrocities committed in the troubled western Darfur region, a leading human rights watchdog said on Monday. ”The Sudanese government at the highest levels is responsible for widespread and systematic abuses in Darfur,” Human Rights Watch said.
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/ 11 December 2005
Ethiopia said on Friday it is prepared to withdraw from its disputed border with Eritrea in compliance with a United Nations order aimed at reducing tension between the two countries. ”This move is in the interests of peace,” said Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin, according to the Ethiopian News Agency.
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/ 9 December 2005
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan will send two senior UN officials to Eritrea and Ethiopia to assess the volatile border stand-off following a decision by the Eritrean government to expel personnel from the UN peacekeeping mission there. Annan has asked the head of the UN peacekeeping department, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, to leave as soon as practicable for the Horn of Africa.
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/ 7 December 2005
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki appeared set on Wednesday to name a new government to replace the Cabinet he fired en masse last month after the embarrassing rejection of a new Constitution he backed. The expected announcement is hoped to bring an end to a two-week crisis of authority in the East African nation.
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/ 5 December 2005
A strong earthquake shook Central and East Africa on Monday, causing buildings to sway in at least six nations near its epicentre on the border between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. No damage or injuries were immediately reported from the temblor that registered 7,5 on the Richter scale.
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/ 5 December 2005
The trial in Nairobi of six men, including a priest, accused of murdering a septugenarian Italian bishop in central Kenya earlier this year hit a snag on Monday when one of the defendents claimed to have lost his hearing under police torture. Over prosecution objections, Nairobi High Court Nicholas Ombinja adjourned the trial, which had been scheduled to start on Monday.
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/ 1 December 2005
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/257998/special_rep_icon_template.jpg" align=left>With only a quarter of Kenyans who need anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) receiving them from the government, the race is on to ensure that many more people get treatment to fend off Aids-related diseases. But ARV recipients also need enough, good food, without which ARVs cannot work properly.
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/ 29 November 2005
Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai on Tuesday urged Kenya’s bickering political leaders to show restraint in a crisis of authority that has raised fears of unrest in East Africa’s most stable nation. She urged Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and the opposition to cool tensions that erupted after last week’s rejection of a new Constitution.
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/ 28 November 2005
Kenya’s opposition vowed on Monday to defy a government ban on demonstrations and keep up demands for President Mwai Kibaki to call new elections after last week’s rejection of a new Constitution he backed. Leaders of the Orange Democratic Movement said the ban is illegal.
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/ 26 November 2005
Stung by the rejection of a new Constitution he backed, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has moved to restore flagging confidence in his leadership with a pair of tough political moves, analysts said on Friday. Kibaki sacked his entire Cabinet and then suspended next week’s planned reopening of Parliament.