HIV continues to increase the burden on already over-stretched health services in developing countries. DFID-funded research involving the UK's Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine assessed the economic burden of HIV/AIDS on medical services at Kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya.

The newly established Anti Corruption Courts may meet the same fate as the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority if an application challenging their constitutionality is allowed in court.

Kenyan authorities are threatening to repatriate hundreds of Ethiopian and Somali refugees rounded up in a police sweep in Nairobi on May 30, 2002. If returned, many could face arbitrary arrest, torture, and other serious abuses in their countries of origin. "The Kenyan government must not return people to the hands of their abusers," said Alison Parker, refugee policy fellow at Human Rights Watch.

Head of Anti-Corruption Courts, Chief Magistrate Jessie Lesit, has slammed the Anti-Corruption Police Unit for delaying the prosecution of corruption cases. Lesit took issue with the unit's prosecution wing over a delay in obtaining consent to prosecute a police officer who appeared before her last month charged with soliciting for a Sh5,000 bribe.

Recognizing that HIV/AIDS has a differential impact on young women and men, the Eastern and Southern African Young Women’s symposium on HIV/AIDS is expected to bring together young women from academic institutions in the region, gender-based organizations, NGOs, Donors and governments to reflect on the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on young women and to design strategies for greater practical action to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS among young women. Young women in academic institutions are arguably Africa’s hope in terms of enhancing gender-responsive development, thus justifying the need for such an event. The Workshop will be held in Nairobi, Kenya between 27th and 29th November 2002, to coincide with the World AIDS Day Celebrations.

Kenyan immigration authorities and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are making arrangements to facilitate the transportation of hundreds of refugees whom the police arrested last week in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to refugee camps in the north of the country.

The Kenyan government and the World Food Programme (WFP) have jointly sent emergency food aid to some 47,000 residents of Tana River District, eastern Kenya, who have been cut off by heavy rains that have caused flooding in western and eastern parts of the country in the past few weeks. A road convoy carrying relief food left the north-eastern Kenyan town of Garissa on Monday under military escort, heading for Ijara division, Tana River District, where some 40,000 residents were in urgent need of emergency relief, a humanitarian source in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, told IRIN on Monday.

Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi says that it is his wish to retire once his term ends and to hold the next general election without delay under the present constitution.

Perpetrators of armed attacks in the run-up to the last general election in Kenya have said that they were backed by ruling party officials, Human Rights Watch has revealed in a new report."The spread of small arms and the manipulation of ethnic tensions are an explosive mix," said Lisa Misol, researcher with the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "Kenya must stop weapons from getting into the hands of people who would use them to disrupt the vote."

The Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is coordinating a multifaceted programme to mark World Environment Day, which fell on Wednesday, by "contributing to the healing of the ailing planet". In one initiative, some 6,500 indigenous trees are to be planted in an environmentally damaged part of the Aberdare Mountains, which is intended to help restore the health of local rivers, retain moisture in the land and stabilise soils.

A new government study on child labour in Kenya reflects the tough economic realities which, combined with the negative effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, are causing an unprecedented rise in poverty levels among Kenyan households, according to a leading child rights activist. Entitled "The 1998/'99 Child Labour Report", it concluded that many children in Kenya were in the workplace, often under hazardous conditions, despite the legal provisions and intervention programmes put in place to combat child labour.

Technical training, the basis of industrial development to which the Government is committed, is reeling under such serious difficulties that unless something is done urgently, it may keel over altogether.

Hundreds of Kenyan slum and street children last Thursday thronged the National Stadium in Nairobi to take part in the finals of a month-long soccer tournament, as part of an initiative launched this year to combat drug abuse and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV/AIDS, among these high-risk youth.

A Catholic priest and the Nyeri Catholic Arch-diocese were yesterday awarded Sh4 million in libel damages against the East African Standard and the Daily Nation. Nyeri High Court Judge J V O Juma found the two newspaper publishing groups guilty of defaming Father John Mwangi Maimba and the church four years ago.

Nairobinet Online, an application service provider in East Africa, in conjunction with Mindleaders, will soon start offering courses in information technology, business and finance.

The Kenyan government plans to launch a major measles vaccination campaign towards the end of June to tackle a disease that kills about 50 children in the country every day. Julius Meme, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Health, said on Wednesday that the US $15 million campaign, to be held from 17 and 23 June, would target more than 14.6 million children between nine months and 14 years of age.

At least 580 million women in the world are illiterate, Edith Adera, the Team Leader of the Acacia Initiative at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), said. The figure represented 65 per cent of illiterate people in the world.

A women-only university, which will offer science and technology courses, has been launched in Kenya, with the explicit aim of popularising science among African women. The privately owned Kiriri Women’s University of Science and Technology (KWUST), has already received a letter of interim authority from the Commission for Higher Education, the body charged with registration of new universities in the country.

Heavy rains in Kenya could precipitate a health crisis in any number of ways. In rural areas, water sources can become contaminated, and because most rural folk do not know how to de-contaminate drinking water, this could easily translate into greater incidence of water-borne diseases.

A Bill aimed at curbing the destruction of forests will soon be presented to Parliament. Environment and Natural Resources Minister Joseph Kamotho said the Bill is aimed at rectifying mistakes experienced in the past concerning forest allocations and their destruction. "This is a Government plan to ensure that our forests, and by extension the environment, are given priority. We are serious about the issue and want to ensure that parameters to safeguard it are in place."