Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings offered a stinging indictment of Kenya’s police force in a written statement at the end of a 10-day trip to the country.

A day earlier, the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, with which Alston has been working on his visit, released filmed testimony of a former policeman, who has since been killed. He described over 50 executions by police officers. Alston said he found evidence that the police had set up death squads to target the gang.

The police force has denied involvement in extrajudicial killings. spokesman dismissed the allegations of the human rights commission, suggesting the organization was being investigated for receiving money from the Mungiki gang. The commission, in turn, dismissed those charges, accusing the police of a tendency to attack the character and credibility of its critics, rather than engaging with their charges.

Alston said he heard “overwhelming” testimony of the killings, which he said occurred regularly. The police commissioner and other senior Kenyan police officials denied the accusations, he said.

The police may kill for personal reasons, for extortion or for ransom, Alston said. He added, “Often they kill in the name of crime control, but in circumstances where they could readily make an arrest.

He cited as an example James Ng’ang’a Kariuki Muiruri, 29, whom he said police shot and killed last month in the capital, Nairobi.

“After a disagreement at a hotel, a police officer stopped the car James and his brother were in, and ordered James to handcuff himself. When he asked why he was being arrested, James was shot three times,” Alson said in the news release.

“The only exceptional things about the case were that James was the son of a former Member of Parliament, and the incident had been witnessed,” he said.

 Alston said there was no accountability for the alleged police killings; there is no independent police internal affairs unit.

He called for Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki to fire the police commissioner. “Any serious commitment to ending the impunity that currently reigns in relation to the widespread and systematic killings by the police should begin with the immediate dismissal of the police commissioner. In the absence of such a step it will be impossible to conclude that there is a strong commitment at the very top to deal with this problem.”

As for Attorney General Amos Wako, Alston’s comments were severe, and he called for his resignation. “Mr. Wako is the embodiment in Kenya of the phenomenon of impunity.”

Alston also accused government security forces of torturing and killing hundreds of men in a March 2008 crackdown on a militia in the Mt. Elgon district, in western Kenya. And he said there was compelling evidence that what he called police death squads were operating in Nairobi and Central Province with a mandate to “exterminate” suspected Mungiki gang members. “These are not ‘rogue’ squads, but police who are acting on the explicit orders of their superiors,” he said.

The office of US Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger released statement saying this is accordance with past practice.  “In keeping with past practice, the chiefs of diplomatic missions in Washington and their spouses are invited to represent their countries at the inauguration.  “Without exception, no other official foreign delegations from any countries in the world are invited to the inauguration.”

The Government will be represented by the kenya ambassador to US, Peter Ogego, the statement added.

Kenyans have strong interest in President-elect Barack Obama as his father was Kenyan- born, shortly after CNN declared Obama the winner just before 7am (Kenya time) on Wednesday. Soon after Kenyan President Kibaki announced that Kenyans will on Thursday take a day off to mark the historic election of Obama to the most powerful office on earth. Even as the President made the declaration, Kenyans were already deep in celebration. From the sprawling Kibera slums in Nairobi to the senator’s ancestral home 400 kilometres west in Kogelo, jubilant Kenyans sung and danced in honor of a victorious son.

Young Africans hoping to follow in Obama’s footsteps — even those with the same name — may face disappointment and disillusionment.

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mrs Obama isn’t actually related to the next president by blood — she was the third wife of Barack Obama’s paternal grandfather. She will join representatives from the Kenyan government, African Union and African diplomats for an unofficial inaugural ball on Jan. 20

In “Dreams from My Father,” Obama described meeting Sarah Obama during his 1988 trip to his father’s homeland, earning a handshake as a greeting and awkwardness as they struggled to communicate.

“Our mutual vocabulary exhausted, we stared ruefully down at the dirt until (half-sister) Auma finally returned,” Obama writes in “Dreams from My Father.”

“And Granny then turned to Auma and said, in a tone I could understand, that it pained her not to be able to speak to the son of her son.”

Sarah Obama lives in a house in the western Kenya village of Kogelo and speaks only the local Luo language and some little Swahili. She has visited the United States twice before, she came in 2004 to celebrate her step-grandson’s inauguration into the U.S. Senate.

Engineers using new seismic tools to locate hot spots hit powerful veins of steam, warmed by heat from Earth’s core, near the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Several wells have been identified, most of them generating four to five megawatts of electricity, while one has a “bumper” capacity of eight megawatts, UNEP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) said in their joint  press conference.

The geothermal potential from the Rift Valley is “at least 7,000 megawatts,” providing a mighty contribution to the energy needs of 12 countries in East Africa, GEF Chief Executive Officer Monique Barbut said.

Under geothermal, superheated water from underground reservoir is drawn to the surface, where it can be harnessed for several uses according to the temperature.

In Kenya’s case, the water, heated at a depth of two or three kilometres, emerges as steam, which can be used to drive turbines. The Valley is a gouge that extends from the Red Sea to Madagascar where massive tectonic energies are ripping crustal plates apart.

Kenya already has a geothermal plant, dating back a quarter of a century, that delivers around 115 megawatts, or just over a tenth of the country’s electricity capacity.

The results have paved the way for an international effort in 2009 to expand geothermal energy up and down the Rift, which runs from Mozambique in the South to Djibouti in the North.
The Africa Rift Valley Geothermal Development Facility (ARGeo) backed with close to US $18 million of funding and involving UNEP and the World Bank will now underwrite the risks of drilling in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, set to commence in early 2009.

The project, could also transform the prospects and costs for geothermal elsewhere in the world.  Kenya has set itself a goal of generating 1200MW from geothermal by 2015.

“There are least 4000 MW of electricity ready for harvesting along the Rift. It is time to take this technology off the back burner in order to power livelihoods, fuel development and reduce dependence on polluting and unpredictable fossil fuels,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director.

The Leading African airline operates about 75 daily flights from Nairobi’s main airport to 43 destinations around the world.

Kenya Airways Chief Executive Titus Naikuni said “If the situation does not improve within the next one to two days, our operations will be severely affected,”

“I would like to assure our passengers that we are doing all we can to maintain our schedule integrity, especially during the festive season,” Mr Naikuni added in a media statement.

The airline posted a 63 percent drop in pretax profits to US $13.8 million in the first half.  It blamed the weaker returns on high fuel prices, a strong local currency and a political crisis earlier in the year that discouraged visitors to the country.

The Government of Kenya has embarked on major reforms in the country’s forestry sector. As part of these reforms, the KFS was established to succeed the former Forest Department (FD) with effect from February 2007. KFS has an expanded mandate to manage the nation’s forest estate and provide high quality forestry related products and services.

The initiative is part of efforts to implement the Kyoto Protocol, which commits particularly rich countries to reduce their green house gas emissions by 5.2 percent from their 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 when the protocol expires, but also to create incentives for the expanded use of clean energy.

The timing could not have been better given the emergence of the carbon trading market: Countries that create carbon emissions buy certified emission reductions (CERs), i.e. issued credits that can be bought and sold on the official carbon trading market, from developing countries to offset their emissions. Carbon offsets can come from many sources, but are dominated by three types of projects:

Forestry sequestration, i.e. the avoidance of deforestation or the planting of new forests (36%),
Renewable energy, i.e. generating power with clean renewable sources, e.g. wind and solar (33%); and
Industrial gases, i.e. containing and storing industrial gases created by industry so they are not released into the atmosphere (30%).
Deforestation in tropical countries is often driven by the economic reality that forests are worth more dead than alive. But the emerging markets for carbon credits could radically alter that equation. A study conducted by the World Agroforestry Centre found that ventures that prompted deforestation, such as clearance for agricultural purposes, charcoal burning, wood fuel etc. rarely generated more than USD5 for every ton of Co2 equivalent they released and frequently returned less than USD1. Meanwhile, European buyers are currently paying about USD35 for an offset tied to a one-ton reduction in Co2 emissions.

Even though the Kyoto Protocol stopped short of recognising forest protection as a source of CERs, a parallel voluntary market has sprung up. Voluntary offset trading stems from a variety of sources – people trying to offset their carbon footprints, businesses seeking to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, or major events trying to be carbon neutral, such as the Olympics, the Super Bowl etc. To date, avoidance of deforestation is still confined to the voluntary market, which is still a small part of all carbon trading and buying, with a value of USD331m in 2007 as opposed to the Kyoto Protocol’s CDM and EU’s emission trading scheme worth USD64bn. But the voluntary markets grew more rapidly in the preceding year, tripling in value from USD91m in 2006, whereas the CER market only doubled in value. This trend is set to continue as the voluntary offset market is expanding at an astounding rate and, though still in its infancy, is one of the fastest growing markets on the planet. Any doubts about the importance of the voluntary carbon market should have been removed by Merrill Lynch’s announcement in early 2008 of a new carbon offset service to assist businesses to reduce emissions through voluntary offsets: Merrill Lynch’s managing director has valued the market at over USD70bn.

Most Kenyans travel to their rural homes to join their families for Christmas and New Year celebrations,  as the number of passengers increase, leading to the double sins of inflated fares and many accidents attributed to reckless driving.

Transport Licensing Board (TLB) chairman, Wilfred Olelegei said “This will increase the safety on our roads during this festive season” ,
He added “72 Kenyans lost their lives in October alone this year because the legal notice of 2003 is no longer properly enforced”

TLB, which is only mandated to license the routes does not have the capacity to enforce the rules. Mr Olelegei said a significant number of vehicles have tampered with speed governors and in almost all the accident cases reported, speeding was a major cause
The board is meeting in Mombasa to come up with ways of addressing accidents involving PSVs and other challenges on the roads.

TLB has powers to suspend licences of offenders such as interfering with speed-governers for only three months. The Mombasa meeting  is expected to come up  with measures that will, among other things, restore sanity in the matatu industry.

“We shall deliberate on the TLB Act, Traffic Act and Local Authority Act to identify the loopholes that curtail our work and road safety,” Mr Olelegei said. adding that another workshop will be held with the other stakeholders in the industry.

Small employers now use the pin code-protected system to pay their workers, without risking lugging bags of cash around on payday. Markets in tiny villages have seen sales jump since residents no longer need to go to town to get cash and buy goods. Already 3 million people—one in three Kenyan mobile phone users—are using the service, and more than $2.5 million has changed hands.

Kenya is not the first to try mobile banking. The Philippines, South Africa and Afghanistan all now use some form of cell phone cash transfers. The system also has drawn huge interest in the Congo, where lack of infrastructure makes transferring almost anything a challenge.

But Kenyans have been among the most enthusiastic in adopting the new technology, to the point that the country’s banks are “very scared” about losing potential depositors at the low end of the market, and money wiring companies, which charge fees much higher than those through M-Pesa, face going out of business.

Texting money still has its problems. Tough international money laundering and fraud regulations have so far kept M-Pesa from offering international money transfer services. Telephone and banking regulators are sparring over who should set the rules for mobile banking. And getting enough cash to M-Pesa agents in remote areas of the country has been a challenge.