Nairobi  - Kenya will be happy to see the back of 2008, a year in which one of sub-Saharan Africa's most stable states exploded into an orgy of violence following disputed presidential elections.

The future peace of the East African nation now depends upon the implementation of two crucial reports commissioned in the wake of the violence.

Observers are warning that the 2012 elections could prompt more bloodletting should the recommendations not be taken onboard, but so far the signs are looking good.

Nairobi  - Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki have signed a deal to set up a local tribunal to try politicians and businessmen accused of orchestrating this year's post-election violence.

The deal was signed hours before the midnight deadline given by a commission headed by Justice Philip Waki.

Waki in October handed down the deadline to create a local tribunal to try those named in an envelope Waki handed over to former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

Nairobi - Sudanese government forces and government-aligned militia have forced adults and children into slave labour and sexual service in Sudan's restive Darfur province, a new report by a coalition of African charities has found.

The Darfur Consortium said it had eyewitness accounts from over 100 people that showed men had been forced to work as farm labourers for the Janjaweed militia, while women and children had been used as sex slaves and domestic help for Sudanese troops in Khartoum.

Nairobi  - For a long time, Rosemary Agutu idolized US actor Robert Redford, who played the character of Denys Finch Hatton in the movie Out of Africa.

Agutu is a museum guide at the Karen Blixen Museum and Redford can no longer compete with her latest idol.

"Barack Obama, of course. His election victory has given us a big lift," says the 26-year-old. Agutu now hopes that the tourist industry in her country will benefit from the "Obama effect."

Nowhere else in the world does US president-elect Obama have so many relatives as Kenya - his father's birthplace.

Rosemary knows almost all of them. "After all, I was born in Kogelo where Obama's grandmother Sarah lives," she says.

Nairobi/Kampala - Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan have attacked the base of Ugandan rebels holed up in the jungles of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, military officials said Monday.

Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), failed to turn up to sign a peace agreement on November 29.

He has repeatedly stalled on signing a final agreement and it now appears that patience with him has run out.

A joint statement from the three armies said that Kony's main camp in the Garamba region of DR Congo had been attacked over the weekend and burned down.

Nairobi - Somali pirates have release a Greek chemical tanker but three of its crew may have died in unknown circumstances, a Kenyan maritime official said Saturday.

"The MT Action was released last night," Andrew Mwangura, the head of the Kenyan arm of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"Three of the crew members appear to have died in fishy circumstances." The Panama-flagged MT Action, which had 20 crew onboard, was seized in early October.

Piracy has surged off the coast of Somalia this year as the security situation in the conflict-stricken Horn of Africa nation degenerates.