Kenya: State frees leader Mungiki. In images: manhunt on Mungiki-members 2007-2009

Somalia: somali government, insurgents vow escalation

Somalia's embattled government and Islamist rebels vowed on Friday to step up their war with the government promising a counter-offensive while the Shebab militia threatened to take fighting beyond Somalia's borders.

Speaking a day after an insurgent attack against the presidency in Mogadishu sparked clashes that left at least 21 civilians dead, Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke said tide was turning in the conflict.

"We're very confident that our forces will recapture the town (Mogadishu)," he told reporters in Nairobi after a meeting with UN Under Secretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe.
The western-backed transitional administration headed by President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed controls less than half of Mogadishu and owes its survival largely to the protection of African Union peacekeepers.

Sharmarke stressed that the government would seek to reassert control over southern Somalia, which has been firmly under insurgent control since last year.

Full article: Google News

Kenya: Mungiki leader freed from prison

The leader of a banned Kenyan gang has been freed after charges that he murdered 28 people were dropped.Maina Njenga was freed on Friday and called on all fellow Mungiki members to renounce membership and become Christians.

Speaking in a church in the centre of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, Njenga said: "I have now come to learn that there is something bigger than what is in that mountain... I want to be singing in the church and then I get baptised.

"Those others out there who have not come up publicly should follow suit and get saved and get out of the Mungiki."

Njenga had led Mungiki, a pseudo-religious group of dreadlocked youths who worshipped spirits in Mount Kenya and embraced rituals such as female circumcision.

Full article: Al Jazeera

Kenya: cholera deaths in Nairobi slum

Two more people died of what is suspected to be cholera in Nairobi’s Mukuru Kwa Njenga slums on Saturday, raising the death toll to 11, as hundreds more sought treatment.

A man and a woman, both aged above 30, died on Friday night after complaining of diarrhoea. The woman is reported to have died at home while the man died on his way to hospital. The man is said to have received a prescription at a local clinic.

More residents visited the Medical Missionaries of Mary Hospital on Saturday complaining of stomach pains, diarrhoea and vomiting. “We treated 500 people by yesterday afternoon, most of them children under five years,” said Sr Elizabeth Bundala, the hospital’s project coordinator.

Full article: Sunday Nation

Kenya: why Delamere son was released early

Thomas Cholmondeley had been scheduled to be released on Sunday, but since it is a weekend, the prison authorities decided to free him last Friday.

He quickly returned to his Soysambu Farm home where he will begin to rebuild his life after three years in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. Prison authorities insisted that he was not a beneficiary of presidential clemency but rather simply qualified for remission.

Mr Cholmondeley will be missed by the many friends he made at the prison and other inmates. Through his initiatives, their life had become more bearable than it was before his arrival.

Full article: Sunday Nation

Ethiopia: drought need not mean hunger and destitution

With droughts becoming more common, donors and the Ethiopian government must look beyond the traditional "band aid" responses to disasters by using approaches that are more cost-effective, sustainable and better suited to the population, international aid agency Oxfam says in a new report.

"We cannot make the rains come, but there is much more that we can do to break the cycle of drought-driven disaster in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa," Penny Lawrence, Oxfam's international director, states. "Food aid offers temporary relief and has kept people alive in countless situations, but does not tackle the underlying causes that continue to make people vulnerable to disaster year after year."


Full article: IRIN

Johnny mad boy

Fact: many of its cast are former boy soldiers who fought for the now arraigned Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. Writer-director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire says he approached the film as therapy for them.