Top price of Kenya's best-grade tea slips at latest auction
NAIROBI (Reuters) - The highest
price of top-grade Kenyan tea slipped to $3.10 per kg at auction this
week from $3.70 at the previous sale, Africa Tea Brokers said on
Tuesday.
Kenya
is the world's leading exporter of black tea and the crop is a major
foreign exchange earner for the economy, alongside horticulture and
tourism.
Best Broken Pekoe Ones (BP1s) fetched $2.00-$3.10 per kg, compared with
$2.12-$3.70 last week, ATB said in a report on the auction held on
Monday and Tuesday.
Best Brighter Pekoe Fanning Ones (PF1s) sold at $2.46-$3.24 per kg from $2.38-$3.19 last week.
Most of the tea offered at the weekly Mombasa auction is
from Kenya, but tea from Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and other
regional producers is also sold.
Extremely Rare White Rhino Dies in Kenya—His Kind Nearly Extinct
The 34-year-old animal was found dead October 17 in his enclosure in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy, possibly from natural causes, the reserve said in a statement. White rhinos
are thought to be able to live up to 40 or 50 years. An autopsy is
under way, but officials are certain poachers did not kill Suni, as the
animal was monitored around the clock. (See "1,000+ Rhinos Poached in 2013: Highest in Modern History.")
The death of the rare creature, which had not fathered any
offspring, leaves only six northern white rhinos left on Earth,
including just one male of that subspecies. The southern white rhino, a related subspecies, is considered near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Born at the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, Suni had been an emblem of hope: He was one of four of the world's eight remaining northern rhinos sent to the Kenyan conservancy in 2009 as part of a last-ditch effort to save the critically endangered subspecies.
So far, it hasn't worked. "It's a shame the subspecies got
to that point—that's the worst-case scenario in trying to bring back a
subspecies," said Matthew Lewis, senior program officer for African species conservation at WWF.
The northern white rhinoceros is a "victim of evolution,"
Lewis added—it was a remnant population cut off from the southern white
rhinoceros by the Great Rift Valley and the dense forests of Central
Africa.
Already isolated and occurring in low numbers, the northern
subspecies got caught up in political turmoil in Sudan, the Central
African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda, and
its numbers quickly dwindled because of poaching and habitat loss.
(Related: "Why African Rhinos Are Facing a Crisis.")
"Not Just Another Charismatic Animal"
With just one breeding male left, the outlook for the subspecies is grim. Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, now considers the animal basically extinct.
That "we've lost [the subspecies] is a statement of just how bad off large animals are across Africa," said Pimm, who is also a contributor
to National Geographic's News Watch blog. "It's a measure of the fact
that rhinos are being massively poached and in trouble wherever they
are."
From African lions to elephants, many of the continent's
megafauna species are plummeting in number due to poaching and other
human causes. (See a map of the international illegal trade in rhinos.)
"It also means we're losing this distinctive, important animal within the savanna ecosystem," he said.
Rhinoceroses are key to keeping grasslands healthy, as they eat—and keep in check—particular species of savanna plants.
"It's not just another charismatic animal—it's also a
species that has a very clear ecological role, and we need to be very
worried that we have lost that," Pimm said.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com
Kenya 'not co-operating with ICC' over Kenyatta trial
Prosecutors have asked
the International Criminal Court (ICC) to rule that Kenya's government
is not co-operating with its investigations into Kenyan President Uhuru
Kenyatta's case.
The government was not "going to give us what we are asking for", the prosecution said.
Mr Kenyatta denies inciting violence after Kenya's disputed 2007 polls.
The ICC has summoned him to explain allegations that evidence against him had been withheld.
Mr Kenyatta has flown to The Hague for the two-day hearing and he is expected to appear before the court on Wednesday.
If his trial goes ahead, he will be the first serving head of state to be tried by the ICC.
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