The government of Kenya has announced its intention to import 300 million condoms as part of a new HIV/AIDS control campaign, due to be unveiled in three weeks' time, the 'Daily Nation' newspaper reported on Wednesday. The campaign would feature a policy of encouraging the accessibility, widespread distribution and use of condoms in a bid to reduce HIV infection among 15-25-year-olds by 30 percent in the next four years, the report stated.

WFP on Monday welcomed the arrival in Mombasa port of a 54,000 mt shipment of maize, valued at US $24 million, as part of a substantial donation by the US government towards the agency's post-drought expanded school feeding programme in Kenya. "This food is not only a meal, but a passport to an education, a future, hopes and dreams," said Esther Ouma, a programme analyst for WFP Kenya. "Giving a nutritious meal to a poor student today is key to helping him or her become a literate, self-reliant adult tomorrow," she added.

Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi has "demanded" that people who "knowingly" transmit HIV to others receive the death penalty, Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Moi's proposal that those who knowingly infect others with the virus be hanged drew "mixed reactions" from women's groups and church leaders.

Mzee is 42, headstrong and notorious for crashing through the electrified fence that surrounds a sprawling ranch in north central Kenya. On Thursday, the 4.2-ton bull elephant stumbled out of a truck, shook off his stupor and flapped his ears, ambling free in his new, fenceless home following the most intensive elephant relocation effort to date in eastern Africa.

I am a political scientist based in Kenya but working as a performance consultant in a number of African Countries. Today I took time to read your newsletter which I have received for the last three months. In about an hour, I was able to read news around the continent and visit the sites I thought useful for my work. I was also able to send some articles to my wife for some lively discussions tonight! This is to congratulate you for the idea and to let you know that I am proud of Africa because of groups like you.

The rate of severe malnutrition among Somali child refugees in northeastern Kenya has risen by 172 percent in the last six months, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Tuesday.

President Daniel arap Moi and his ruling party have been buying votes by pumping money into traditional fund-raisers that have long been used to raise financing for public development, an advocacy group said Monday.

Killer AIDS has orphaned over one million children in Kenya. Millions more, affected by the epidemic in other ways, are being forced, due to lack of adequate state support to drop out of school and seek often-dangerous work on the streets in order to care for ill parents.

Environmentalists in Kenya have threatened court action to stop the filming of the American television show "Survivor Series III" that formally begins on July 1 and runs to September 30. They accuse the filmmakers of damaging the fragile ecosystem of Shaba National Reserve in the semi-arid eastern province of Kenya.

Millions of shillings raised in harambees in the country every month are never monitored nor audited by government officials because of laxity and apathy, a study reveals.

As reported in the April issue of the Korogocho Times, the Project launched a women's project on 21st May, 2001. A total of 8 women are now with the project and as result a new line of products have been introduced to best utilize the women's skills. These include beaded chains, bracelets, earrings with wildlife carvings from bones and wood, necklaces, tie and dye, and beaded belts.

A Muslim leader yesterday opposed the Equality Bill, saying it contradicted religious teachings. The deputy director-general of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, Mr Adan Wachu, claimed that gender equality was "not an issue" among Muslims. He insisted that even if the Bill is passed by Parliament, it should not be allowed to apply to Muslim women as "the Quran has it own way of dealing with marriage, succession, adoption, divorce and abortion."

With health inspection in Kenya not quite a priority, pharmacists and shop owners are a making a killing from sales of banned anti-malaria medicines. In dispensing chemists and general shops, chloroquine, malariaquine and dawaquine once used in the past as first line treatment tablets in malaria management - but now prescription drugs - are openly sold in spite of official ban.

President Daniel arap Moi on Monday brought opposition leader Raila Odinga into his cabinet, Kenyan radio reported. In a cabinet reshuffle, Moi appointed Odinga - leader of the National Development Party (NDP), which had recently established a partnership with the ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU) - as Energy Minister. Another NDP member, Adhu Owiti, was appointed Planning Minister, in what was the first time the first time KANU has been joined in cabinet by members of other parties.

A bull called Mwalimu helped save the lives of hundreds of cattle in Kenya's Baringo District during a recent drought. Mwalimu means "teacher" in Swahili and this bull taught other cattle to do something that does not come naturally to them - eat cactus.

The Kenyan parliament on Tuesday unanimously passed a bill which looks set to reduce the cost of essential AIDS treatment significantly. The Industrial Property Bill will allow the government to import or manufacture cheaper copies of brand-name drugs, including the anti-retrovirals (ARVs) used in the drug cocktail used to fight AIDS, according to campaigners for the affordable availability of drugs.

If nothing can be written about Kenya today without the name of its President Daniel Arap Moi weaving its way into the narrative, it is a testament to the legacy his twenty three years in power has bequeathed Kenya. For in those twenty-three years, President Moi has reduced a once proud country into an economic dunghill foraged by his cronies and a political Babel in which the only common language is himself. Even more frightening is his transformation of a peaceful multi-ethnic society into a snakepit where communities are manipulated to believe that their survival depends on the annihilation of others.

Kenya has not yet gone the way of Somalia, Rwanda or Burundi. It still has a largely functioning political infrastructure for controlling ethnic conflict. It might even sound alarmist to suggest the possibility of conflict. That might well be so and violence might not be. But that is largely dependent on the decisions of the regime of President Moi in the next few months.

Kenya is set to go to elections in 2002 with President Moi constitutionally barred from running. Since 1992, when Kenya held its first multiparty elections, politically motivated ethnic violence has become the byword for elections. With Moi set to leave the scene and the ruling cabal scared of the possibility of life without power, the entire future of Kenya might be up for the toss.

In 1992 and 1997 Moi used actual violence and the threat of violence to retain power. The orgy of violence left close to 2000 Kenyans dead and thousands displaced. No one was punished and the real truth remains buried in the official rhetoric of building peace.

Since then, the map of violence and impunity has continued to grow. Close to 40% of the country is now under one form of violence or another. The northern region bordering Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan has become bandit territory. With the government focused on containing the activities of opposition politicians and other political challengers, insecurity in these regions has reached the levels of law intensity warfare, pitting rival militias of local political kingpins of the ruling party. With the political instability in Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia, easy accessibility of arms has transformed the conflict from a political shouting match to a deadly affair.

With the Kenyan economy growing at below zero, the economic collapse has heightened the sense of despair. The uncertainty of whether President Moi will abide by the constitution and retire from politics or will seek to cling on has not helped the situation. With Moi playing a wait-and-see game over his exit investments have continued to board up for the possible eventuality.

In the meantime, many of Moi's close allies, variously implicated in planning violence and wanton corruption are proposing a constitutional manipulation that allows Moi to continue playing a role in Kenyan politics. With Moi back in power, either as president or Prime Minister in a new constitutional arrangement, they will be able to escape accountability for human rights violations. Prosecution of the corrupt and those behind political violence in Kenya, it has been argued, will only lead to further instability and violence. Some supporters and critics of the Moi government have argued that it is time to close the chapter and move on. Time to turn the page, so to speak.

In all this, however, the cries of justice continue unanswered. Closing the chapter may be easy to speak of for those who were not been personally touched by the violence and corruption of the government. But for those who lost relative and property and the millions who have been economically disappeared there can never be a closure. A new chapter will mean addressing their loss and misery.

Kenya is now at the threshold of writing a new constitution. Closing the chapter of corruption and political violence means that the new constitution will not remember this part of Kenya's past. For those who died under police fire while fighting for a new constitution, a closure without justice is an erasure of their memory and their existence. While a new constitution is a fresh beginning, it is not a forgetting of the past.

The negotiation of the future in Kenya still revolves around Moi. He still controls the machinery of political violence. He has used this machinery to play hostage-politics in the past. Indications are he is ready to use it again to allow himself to escape the reach of accountability. Allowing Moi and his allies to escape accountability for instigating ethnic violence may buy the silence of his extremist supporters. But will it be justice?

The WFP said on Friday it had no knowledge of a reported threat by refugees in Dadaab refugee camps, northeastern Kenya, to stage a hunger strike in protest at a reduction in regular food rations. A general food distribution had this week been completed in the camp, and the Nairobi office of WFP would have heard of any such action if it existed, an official told IRIN on Friday.

The Japanese government has suspended funding to a controversial hydroelectric power project in Western Kenya which is still in the first phase of construction. Citing "environmental disruption and corruption" in a letter to the government of Kenya, Japan's Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka indicated that suspension of funding for the Sondu Miriu hydropower dam project was "a response to criticism from environmental campaigners and differences between Kenya and Japan over further funding."

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