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☆ Kenya and Russia to sign trade pact, President Ruto says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/3] Speaker of the National Assembly of Kenya Moses Wetangula shakes hands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya May 29, 2023. Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout via REUTERSNAIROBI, May 29 (Reuters) - Kenya will sign a trade pact with Russia aimed at boosting cooperation between businesses, President William Ruto's office said on Monday, after hosting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Nairobi. Kenya's presidency said in a statement that bilateral trade with Russia was still low despite the potential and the pact would give business the "necessary impetus". Russia says its invasion of Ukraine, launched on Feb. 24, 2022, is aimed at protecting its own security against Ukraine's pro-Western leadership. Lavrov has visited the African continent at least three times this year, while Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba travelled to countries including Ethiopia, Rwanda and Mozambique last week.

☆ Ukraine peace plan is only way to end Russia's war, says Zelenskiy aide
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( Max Hunder | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

He pushed back on a flurry of peace initiatives from China, Brazil, the Vatican and South Africa in recent months. "There cannot be a Brazilian peace plan, a Chinese peace plan, a South African peace plan when you are talking about the war in Ukraine," Zhovkva said in an interview late on Friday. Zelenskiy made a major push to court the Global South this month in response to peace moves from some of its members. Moscow has bolstered ties with Global South powers during the war in Ukraine, including by selling more of its energy to India and China. 'PEACE SUMMIT'Zhovkva said the reaction to Ukraine's 10-point peace plan had been extremely positive at the G7 summit.

☆ A Provocative Satirist Left a Pervasive Legacy, Influencing African Writing
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-29 | by ( Anderson Tepper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina was many things in his short, frenetic life: memoirist and roving essayist, trailblazing editor and publisher, agitator and activist. After winning the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002, he used his prize money to finance a new literary journal, Kwani? (“So what?” in Nairobi slang), helping to promote a generation of Kenyan and African writers. His 2005 essay in the British literary journal Granta, “How to Write About Africa,” eviscerated timeworn Western tropes about Africa and African writing. Wainaina, who died in 2019 at age 48, became an outsize figure on the literary landscape, his omnivorous brilliance matched by ambition and vision on a continental scale.

Persons: Binyavanga Wainaina, ” Organizations: Granta Locations: Nairobi, Africa

Climate change drove heat in the city to a record-breaking 48C (118F) in 2016. While traditional insurance can take months to pay, with so-called "parametric" insurance there is no need to prove losses. At annual climate talks in Egypt last year, nonprofits urged richer nations to help finance parametric insurance as a way of compensating victims of worsening weather extremes. At the moment, insurance schemes in the developing world are largely subsidized by nonprofit groups, national governments, or wealthy countries. Insurance payouts allow them to buy things like gloves to protect their hands from scorching hot metal tools, or fans to stay cool and avoid heat exhaustion.

☆ Aspen Pharmacare CEO Stephen Saad on the future of medicine in Africa
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Tom Page | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CEO Stephen Saad discussed the future of the pharmaceutical sector in Africa, and what lessons Aspen Pharmacare has learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, with CNN’s Eleni Giokos. During the pandemic, we’ve seen a spotlight on the inequalities that exist on the continent in the pharmaceutical sector. Aspen has had a very strong commercial presence across Africa and now you’re moving up the value chain. When Covid came and Africa needed vaccines, over 90% of the vaccines were supplied by India — and that wasn’t great. If it hadn’t been for Aspen, there would have been no vaccines made in Africa for the continent.

☆ Battered by War, Sudan Faces Many Possible Paths — None Good
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Declan Walsh | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

NAIROBI, Kenya — The fighting that erupted in Sudan’s capital one month ago surprised few, the culmination of soaring tensions between rival military leaders. But what has shocked many is the scale and ferocity of the war engulfing Africa’s third-largest country, a conflict that has killed about 1,000 people and prompted one million more to flee their homes. In interviews, they agreed on one thing: The immediate outlook is bleak. “We thought through several scenarios,” said one senior European diplomat who, like others working to broker a peaceful solution, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “None of them ends well.”The immediate challenge is that the warring factions — Sudan’s military, led by Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan — still believe that a military victory is possible, regardless of the cost.

☆ The world can cut plastic pollution by 80% by 2040, the UN says
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Laura Paddison | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Countries could slash plastic pollution by 80% in less than two decades, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme. Plastic pollution is a scourge that affects every part of the world, from the Arctic, to the oceans and the air we breathe. UNEP’s report aims to offer a roadmap to governments and businesses to dramatically cut levels of plastic pollution. This would be the most “powerful market shift,” reducing plastic pollution by 30% by 2040, the report said. Scaling up recycling levels could reduce plastic pollution by a further 20%, according to the report.

☆ Six lions killed in Kenya in blow to conservation efforts
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

NAIROBI, May 14 (Reuters) - Six lions have been killed in a national park in southern Kenya, in a blow to conservation efforts and the tourism industry that is a key pillar of the nation's economy. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said the lions were killed after attacking goats and a dog near villages close to the Amboseli National Park. "Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident as over the last week four other lions have been killed," KWS said in a statement on Saturday. Residents around nature reserves in Kenya often complain that lions and other carnivores kill livestock and domestic animals as humans and wildlife compete for space and resources. The 39,206-hectare Amboseli National Park is home to some of the most prized game including elephants, cheetahs, buffalos and giraffes.

Now, according to an internal U.N. estimate obtained by Reuters, 5 million additional people in Sudan will require emergency assistance, half of them children. Even before the latest crisis, U.N. humanitarian appeals for Africa faced a $17-billion funding gap this year, risking leaving millions without lifesaving assistance. Last year, it spent a third of its overseas aid budget housing refugees inside the UK, a British aid watchdog said in March. Sudan was hosting over 1 million refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Syria, before the outbreak of fighting last month. Aid workers have been killed, food aid looted, and WFP says it's running out of stocks.

☆ Forest search resumes for Kenyan death cult victims of 'highly organised crime'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SHAKAHOLA FOREST, Kenya, May 9 (Reuters) - Kenyan investigators have resumed the search for members of a doomsday cult in a forest where more than 100 corpses, mostly of children, have been exhumed, victims of a "highly organised crime", Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said on Tuesday. "We have many more graves in this forest, and therefore it leads us to conclude that this was a highly organised crime," Kindiki told reporters. Search and rescue efforts for people "suspected to be holed up in the thickets and bushes have been going on". President William Ruto on Friday announced an inquiry into the mass deaths, while a court kept Mackenzie in detention pending further investigations. Reporting by Dicksy Obiero in the Shakahola Forest and Hereward Holland and Humphrey Malalo in Nairobi; Editing by Nick MacfieOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ ChatGPT is powered by these contractors making $15 an hour
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( David Ingram | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Out of the limelight, Savreux and other contractors have spent countless hours in the past few years teaching OpenAI's systems to give better responses in ChatGPT. So far, AI contract work hasn't inspired a similar movement in the U.S. among the Americans quietly building AI systems word-by-word. watch nowJob postings for AI contractors refer to both the allure of working in a cutting-edge industry as well as the sometimes-grinding nature of the work. There's no definitive tally of how many contractors work for AI companies, but it's an increasingly common form of work around the world. A spokesperson for OpenAI said no one was available to answer questions about its use of AI contractors.

☆ Edward Burtynsky Views the Effects of Globalism From Above
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Erica Ackerberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Kenyan residents sort scraps at the Dandora Landfill in Nairobi. Among the world’s largest recycling dumps, Dandora receives about 2,000 tons of industrial, agricultural, medical and commercial waste per day. Credit... Edward Burtynsky/Sundaram Tagore Gallery and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York all rights reserved

☆ WFP suspends food aid to Ethiopia's Tigray over reported thefts
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Dawit Endeshaw | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Summary WFP, USAID suspend aid distributionTigray government urges rethink, says to investigateNAIROBI, May 4 (Reuters) - The U.N. World Food Programme has paused food distribution in Ethiopia's war-ravaged Tigray region in response to reports that significant amounts of aid were being diverted, the agency said. Neither organisation gave details of the source of the reports and the WFP did not say who was responsible for the diversions or when they had taken place. He said he had set up a task force to investigate, calling the reported theft a crime against children, the elderly and the disabled. A spokesperson for Ethiopia's federal government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The government and Tigray forces agreed to end hostilities in November, which has allowed additional aid to reach the region and for some services to be restored.

☆ UN says aid trucks looted in 'volatile' Sudan, urges safe passage
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Mohamed Nureldin Nafisa Eltahir | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Summary Aid trucks looted, says United Nations aid chiefViolence undermining chance of lasting truceGuterres says situation 'unacceptable'UN aid chief Griffiths arrives in Port SudanImproving humanitarian access is a priority -UNKHARTOUM, May 3 (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Wednesday it was seeking assurances from Sudan's warring factions on the safe delivery of aid after six trucks of humanitarian supplies were looted and air strikes in Khartoum undermined a new ceasefire. The conflict has created a humanitarian crisis, with about 100,000 people forced to flee with little food or water to neighbouring countries, the United Nations said. Aid deliveries have been held up in a nation of 46 million people where about one-third had already relied on humanitarian assistance. A broader disaster could be in the making as Sudan's impoverished neighbours grapple with the influx of refugees. Caught between army air strikes overhead and RSF soldiers on the ground, many citizens feel forced to take sides.

☆ Heavy rain, floods kill at least 136 in Rwanda and Uganda
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Philbert Girinema | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/6] Residents walk over a water bridge after their homes were swamped following rains that triggered flooding and landslides in Rubavu district, Western province, Rwanda May 3, 2023. REUTERS/Jean BizimanaSummary Rain causes flooding and landslidesRescuers search for people trapped in homesSix dead in Uganda from mudslidesNAIROBI, May 3 (Reuters) - Flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rain have killed at least 129 people in Rwanda and six in Uganda, authorities said on Wednesday, as rescuers hunted survivors trapped in homes. "We woke up at 2 a.m and heard people screaming," Angelique Nibagwire, 47, said from Karongi district in western Rwanda where at least 16 people died. In a mountainous area of neighbouring Uganda near the border with Rwanda, six people died overnight into Wednesday in the southwestern Kisoro district, the Uganda Red Cross said. Rwanda and Uganda have been experiencing heavy and sustained rains since late March.

☆ Anti-government protests in Kenya resume with police firing tear gas
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Dave Lucas | ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

A boy carries a bouquet of flowers as he walks past a bus torched by unknown people ahead of protests by supporters of Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Azimio La Umoja (Declaration of Unity) One Kenya Alliance, in a nationwide protest...moreA boy carries a bouquet of flowers as he walks past a bus torched by unknown people ahead of protests by supporters of Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Azimio La Umoja (Declaration of Unity) One Kenya Alliance, in a nationwide protest over cost of living and President William Ruto's government in Nairobi, Kenya May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Thomas MukoyaClose

☆ Where the royal family goes in London, from Indian restaurants to theme parks
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Julia Buckley | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +13 min

Well, they’re not, obviously – but sometimes they do put down their tiaras, leave their palaces and join the hoi polloi at restaurants, bars and even theme parks. He once called Brilliant Restaurant in Southall, west London his favorite Indian restaurant – and Gordon Ramsay is also a fan. Stuart C. Wilson/Getty ImagesBack in the noughties, party Prince Harry was a regular at Mahiki, a Tiki-themed bar-club-restaurant in Mayfair. Simon Dack/AlamyIn his memoir “Spare,” Prince Harry wrote about popping out to shop for clothes at T.K. Toby Melville/Getty ImagesThe-then Meghan Markle was apparently spied In the heart of Chelsea while she was engaged to Prince Harry, getting a facial from Sarah Chapman.

☆ Kenyan cult leader appears in court after more than 100 followers die
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NAIROBI, May 2 (Reuters) - A Kenyan cult leader accused of ordering his followers to starve themselves to death appeared in court on Tuesday as investigators searched for more bodies in a forest in eastern Kenya where 101 corpses have already been unearthed. The death toll stands at 109 - 101 bodies, mostly children, found in mass graves and eight people found alive who later died - but could rise further. An investigator involved in the case, who did not wish to be identified, told Reuters Mackenzie has denied ordering his followers to fast. Kenyan media reported that the Malindi court transferred the case to the larger port city of Mombasa. Most showed signs of starvation, while two children showed signs of asphyxiation, he said.

☆ Sudan military faction chiefs agree May 4-11 truce in princple -South Sudan
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Mohamed Noureldin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The credibility of the reported May 4-11 deal ceasefire deal between Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and paramilitary Rapid Support forces (RSF) leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo was unclear, given the rampant violations that undermined previous agreements running from 24 to 72 hours. "The entire region could be affected," he said in an interview with a Japanese newspaper on Tuesday as an envoy from Sudan's army chief, who leads one of the warring sides, met Egyptian officials in Cairo. United Nations officials had said U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths aimed to visit Sudan on Tuesday but the timing was still to be confirmed. "The risk is that this is not just going to be a Sudan crisis, it's going to be a regional crisis," said Michael Dunford, the WFP's East Africa director. That has raised the spectre of a prolonged conflict that could draw in outside powers.

☆ Kenyan cult leader to remain in prison after more than 100 followers die
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

An investigator involved in the case, who did not wish to be identified, told Reuters that Mackenzie has denied ordering his followers to fast. Paul Mackenzie, 50, a Kenyan cult leader accused of ordering his followers of the members of the Good News International Church to starve themselves to death in Shakahola forest, appears at Malindi Law Courts, in Malindi, Kenya, May 2, 2023. Angry residents gathered and started throwing stones at the compound protected by a high wall and barbed wire on top. They later destroyed the front part of the wall, Komora said, adding that police had to fire teargas to disperse them. Most showed signs of starvation, while two children showed signs of asphyxiation, he said.

☆ Kenyan anti-government protests resume with police firing tear gas
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Thomas MukoyaNAIROBI, May 2 (Reuters) - Kenyan police fired tear gas at a small group of protesters in the capital Nairobi on Tuesday as the opposition resumed anti-government demonstrations following a one-month pause. But he later announced that the protests would resume, accusing the government of not negotiating in good faith. The police said on Monday that the protests would be considered unlawful. Odinga's Azimio La Umoja (Declaration of Unity) coalition said the protests would go ahead. Reporting by George Obulutsa, Thomas Mukoya and Humphrey Malalo; Editing by Aaron Ross, Alexandra HudsonOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Kenyan police fire tear gas as anti-government protests resume
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Thomas MukoyaNAIROBI, May 2 (Reuters) - Kenyan police fired tear gas at a small group of protesters in the capital Nairobi on Tuesday as the opposition took to the streets again in anti-government demonstrations following a one-month pause. Police said they had arrested 46 people "engaging in acts of criminality" and said the protests were unlawful. The Azimio La Umoja (Declaration of Unity) coalition said some of its members of parliament were stopped on their way to the president's office and met with teargas. Our protests will resume on Thursday," the coalition said in a statement. But he later announced that the protests would resume, accusing the government of not negotiating in good faith.

☆ The Mind-Expanding Value of Arts Education
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Ginanne Brownell | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Awuor Onguru says that if it were not for her continued exposure to arts education as a child, she never would have gotten into Yale University. Growing up in a lower-middle-class family in Nairobi, Kenya, Ms. Onguru, now a 20-year-old junior majoring in English and French, started taking music lessons at the age of four. During her high school summer breaks, Ms. Onguru — who also has a strong interest in creative writing and poetry — went to the United States, attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts’ creative writing camp, in Michigan, and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. Ms. Onguru, who recently returned to campus after helping organize Yale Glee Club’s spring tour in Kenya, hopes to become a journalist after graduation. “But they found places to express themselves, found places to be creative, found places to say things that they didn’t know how else to say them.”

Authorities have recovered 101 bodies from shallow graves since April 21, while eight cult members were found alive but died later. Cult leader Paul Mackenzie has been in police custody since April 14, held alongside 14 other cult members. Children account for most of the bodies recovered so far, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said on Friday. Kindiki said the autopsies will look at all possibilities, including whether or not some bodies had missing organs. Oduor said the government was collecting DNA samples from those who had reported missing relatives and would do the matching in a process that would take at least a month.

Eight cult members who were found emaciated in the forest died later. Mackenzie has been in police custody since April 14 alongside 14 other suspected cult members. Two showed signs of asphyxiation, he added. Children account for most of the bodies recovered so far, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said on Friday. On Sunday, President William Ruto said he would appoint a judicial commission of inquiry this week to probe what happened in Shakahola.

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