1. IEBC Warns Voter Registration 30 Day Period Won’t be Extended
Voter registration will be a 30-day exercise and will not be extended, the electoral commission has announced. Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Isaack Hassan said on Monday that registration would start on November 1 and would not be extended for “even a single day.” “I appeal to Kenyans to register during that period because there will be no extensions,” he warned.
2. Central Bank Governor Warns of Looming Public Debt Crisis
Heavy government borrowing has pushed the national debt to a critical level where it risks upsetting macro-economic stability and slow down growth, Central Bank of Kenya governor Njuguna Ndung’u has warned. Prof Ndung’u is particularly uncomfortable with the fact that much of the borrowing is being done to meet rising administrative costs, depriving the economy the growth momentum it needs to sustain the heavy debt load.
3. Big Business for Shops as CCK Puts off Fake Phones
Monday was the day of reckoning when millions of fake mobile phones handsets in Kenya were switched off the networks. Kenyans flooded phone shops across the country in a last-minute dash to replace counterfeit handsets. “My phone has not been switched off, but I suspect it might. I will just have to go at a loss to replace it,” said Mr James Mutinda at a Safaricom Shop in the Central Business District.
4. Samsung Sues Apple over iPhone 5
Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that it filed a new lawsuit against Apple Inc in a U.S. court, contending the iPhone 5 infringed on Samsung’s patents.
5. Security Flaw in Android Identified
A weakness that can cause all the data stored on Android smartphone handsets to be erased has been found. Websites tricked users into activating malicious code by clicking on-screen phone numbers, Ravi Borgaonkar, from the Technical University Berlin, said. No Android could tell the difference between actual phone numbers and USSD codes recognised by handsets as instructions to re-set or wipe its memory card, he wrote in a blog post.
6. New wave of Hotel Rooms Coming to Kenya Eyeing the Middle Class
Travel and tourism in Africa generates about $164 billion a year, 9 percent of the continent’s total GDP, said David Scowsill, president and chief executive of World Travel & Tourism Council. He said tourism generates almost 19 million jobs in Africa, 7.1 percent of all employment. And that business is expected to grow. This is the face of new, high-end hotels in Africa. Nairobi has seen the construction of several upscale properties in recent years, as developers eye an increase in business travel to a continent with rising business prospects.
7. Tullow Start Drilling Third Oil Well in Kenya
Drilling of the well, known as Paipai-1 and located Marsabit County, started on Saturday. Its planned total depth is 4,112 metres and it could have as many as 121 million barrels of crude oil, Africa Oil said. Tullow hopes the well will encounter oil, rather than gas.
8. COFEK Report Ranks Orange As Best in Service Quality
ORANGE mobile network has the best voice performance and data service in Nairobi compared to other networks according to a research commissioned by the Consumer Federation of Kenya has said. Mohit Lohani, the chief technological officer in phimetrics technologies- the firm that conducted the research- said Safaricom has the widest coverage as compared to the other networks but poor indoor signal and internet data processing.