Prosecutors in Kenya have dropped charges against three journalists accused of publishing false information with the aim of causing alarm. The men were arrested in February over a story alleging that President Mwai Kibaki had secretly met a key opponent. Armed police later raided the premises of their newspaper, the Standard, and its sister television station, KTN.

Just like Karura Forest, the bulk of Ngong Forest was irregularly allocated in the 1990’s. The report compiled by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights says the taxpayer lost over Sh9 billion worth of prime land to crooked individuals who received and sold the land to third parties.

Covered in ochre-dusted red cloth, four young Maasai men guide a herd of cattle across the busy road to Nairobi. Among the herd are several zebras, not ready yet to be separated from the livestock. The herders don't seem to mind their presence. From this town — Kitengela, in the Kajiado district — Nairobi's skyscrapers are clearly visible in the distance.

Part of Kenyan President Kibaki's re-election strategy is to weaken civil society, if not kill this country’s once-powerful civil society movement, reports the East African Standard. In addition to the government's publicly stated intention to reduce the powers of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) are preparing abuses of maladmistration charges against Mr Maina Kiai, the KNCHR chairman.

Kenya’s official human rights watchdog has awarded local journalist, Peter Makori, Shs 5 million (around $69 000) as compensation for malicious arrest and prosecution over the murder of two provincial administrators two years ago, writes Eric Nyakagwa. In its first human rights violations ruling, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR)’s complaints panel ordered the government to pay him compensation for his unlawful arrest and detention.

Billions of shillings from corrupt deals are about to be seized by anti-graft chiefs. The cash has been stashed in 78 bank accounts belonging to politicians from the current and previous regimes, prominent businessmen and former senior civil servants, including permanent secretaries. Court warrants allowing the accounts to be seized and the proceeds recovered by the State are already in the hands of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, its director Aaron Ringera confirmed.

When President Kibaki announced his Government's commitment to ending the persistent land problem at the Coast on Madaraka Day, the local residents dismissed it as yet another populist statement from a politician.

The two top teams spearheading reforms to the Constitution have fallen out -only moments after meeting for the first time. The split led to the Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Constitutional Affairs proposing that they alone should focus on agreeing a draft of minimum reforms that could be enacted before the next General Election.

eLearning Africa 2007, the second International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training, will take place from the 28th to the 30th of May, 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya under the Patronage of the Kenyan Minister for Education, Science and Technology, the Hon. Dr. Noah Wekesa, MP and will focus on "Building Infrastructures and Capacities to Reach out to the Whole of Africa".

The Western Kenyan highlands are one of the poorest regions in the world, with low agricultural yields and widespread poverty. Many experts believe restoring soil fertility is vital for improving agricultural production.

Corruption and tribalism are derailing economic growth, the New Partnership for African Development (Nepad) has said. Dr Grace Ongile, Nepad executive director, said unless the Government eradicated the vices, last year’s 5.8 per cent economic growth was likely to drift back to negative in a few years.

An on-going project to erect a 400-kilometre long electric fence in Kenya's Laikipia district is being seen as a ploy to separate white ranchers from peasants. The project is part of a grand scheme to set up a series of mega-conservation sites along the Rift Valley.

The Western Kenyan highlands are one of the poorest regions in the world, with low agricultural yields and widespread poverty. Many experts believe restoring soil fertility is vital for improving agricultural production. Government and non-governmental organisations encourage and sustain the use of these techniques.

The fraught process of constitutional review in Kenya marked another chapter this week, with an announcement by President Mwai Kibaki that there would be no partial reform of the constitution ahead of general elections next year. This came after certain parliamentarians proposed changes, dubbed "minimum reforms", saying another whole scale review of the constitution was not feasible before the 2007 poll; the reforms include having the president stripped of his exclusive right to appoint members of the 21-person Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK).

Are the effects of teenage pregnancy on the education of girls being addressed with sufficient vigour in Kenya? With statistics indicating that pregnancy accounts for 31 percent of all school drop-out cases among girls, this is a question that begs asking.

The Kenyan lands ministry has said it will repossess all land owned by "absentee landlords" in the coastal strip and redistribute it to squatters. The ministry says it will seize such land in Coast Province by next Monday (August 28), in line with a presidential decree. The land question is a particular problem in the province, where half of the 4m residents are squatters.

The Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA) and the Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP)—both projects of Open Society Institute (OSI)—are hiring a Programme Officer. The position will be based in Nairobi, Kenya, in the OSIEA office.
DEADLINE PASSED

Evelyn Kwamboka, a reporter with the Standard, last Friday opposed a plea by the state to have her take the witness stand to disclose sources of a court story appearing in the newspaper on June 28, according to a report on The reporter had been served with summons requiring her to disclose the source of a story she authored on the Bishop Gilbert Deya's so-called miracle babies' saga.

A political party founded two months ago by politicians allied to Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki on Tuesday (25 July) won three out of five parliamentary seats after a by-election called following the deaths of five MPs in a plane crash in April.

The lone doctor on duty on a Sunday morning at the New Nyanza Provincial hospital's paediatric wing has to attend to some 100 patients. He tells his audience that he loses three patients everyday to malaria, just because they reach the hospital when their health status has deteriorated.