Mwakilishi News Bulletin - Midday Edition, Sunday 01 November 2026

Midday Edition for Sunday, 01 November 2026. Running time 8:03.

In this bulletin

Diaspora News

1. Kenyans in Thailand join Bangkok charity football tournament
2. Survivor tells how Nairobi agencies lured Kenyans into the Russia-Ukraine war
3. Kenyans in UK and Europe back Sifuna presidential bid
4. Kenyan student Nelbert Kipruto buried as UK tests continue

Immigration News

1. Scotland proposes three new visa routes
2. Saudi Arabia bans Kenya travel over Ebola

Kenya News

1. Kalonzo tells Sifuna to wait on 2027 ticket
2. Maraga warns of crisis as gender rule deadline expires
3. Sifuna rallies opposition as movement opens Kwale office
4. Former Nation journalist Kitavi Mutua dies after snake bite

Transcript

This is the news from Mwakilishi.com.

Good afternoon. It's midday on Sunday, the first of November, and here is your midday edition.

Coming up.

Saudi Arabia bans all travel from Kenya as Ebola cases rise to nine.

Sheila Chepkirui wins the New York City Marathon to extend Kenya's reign.

Maraga warns of constitutional crisis as gender rule deadline expires on Ruto's Cabinet.

Those stories, and more, in the next few minutes.

Turning to diaspora news, Kenyans living in Thailand have joined corporate teams and local communities in Bangkok for a charity football tournament backing a rural school. The twelfth Educational Caravan Charity Seven-A-Side Tournament brought together twenty-four teams at the Tata Soccer Stadium. A joint African diaspora side featuring Kenyan nationals played to raise funds for Ban Khlong Somboon School. Deputy Head of Mission Glenns Etyang, speaking for Ambassador Lucy Kiruthu, praised organisers for using sport to build friendships across borders, and embassy officials handed out the prizes. He also commended Kenyans there for supporting community initiatives.

Staying with the diaspora, a survivor says Nairobi recruitment agencies lured hundreds of Kenyans onto the Russia-Ukraine frontlines with fake civilian jobs. Intelligence estimates put about one thousand Kenyans in the Russian military. Vincent Odhiambo says a recruiter on Biashara Street offered shop jobs paying up to five hundred seventeen thousand shillings a month. After a ten thousand shilling airport fee, he flew out on the thirteenth of July, twenty twenty-five. In Saint Petersburg, handlers seized passports, made recruits sign unread Russian documents, then drove them to a forest and declared them soldiers.

Also from the diaspora, Kenyans in the United Kingdom and Europe have pledged to back Senator Edwin Sifuna's presidential bid under the Linda Mwananchi Movement. The movement's UK and Europe Secretariat announced its position on Saturday, after the party's launch in Nairobi. Chairman Francisco Macharia Mbugua urged young people to register as voters, praising Generation Z for demanding accountability. The group welcomed Doctor Gilbert Shanga as Secretary for International Affairs and Doctor Eunice Juma as Secretary for Diaspora Affairs. The appointments face ratification at the National Delegates Convention on the thirteenth of November, twenty twenty-six.

Still in diaspora news, Kenyan nursing student Nelbert Kipruto Rirei was buried on Saturday at his family home in Kesses, Uasin Gishu County, as British medical examiners keep testing to determine how he died. A post-mortem found no physical trauma or suspicious circumstances, but the exact cause remains unknown, pending toxicology results. Rirei had been living and working in Cambridge. He vanished on the eighth of October after being dropped at a shop in Chesterton. Police recovered his body from the River Cam, and Kenyans in the UK held a memorial on the sixteenth of October.

Turning to immigration news, the Scottish Government has proposed three new visa routes for foreign workers and graduates, setting up a clash with Westminster. Business Minister Tom Arthur's paper says populations fell in twenty of Scotland's thirty-two council areas between mid twenty twenty-four and mid twenty twenty-five, and twenty-one per cent of people are now aged sixty-five and over. A Scottish Visa would assess applicants on age, education and skills, with no job offer required. A rural pilot would cap three hundred migrants per community, and a Scottish Graduate Visa would give graduates two extra years.

Staying with immigration, Saudi Arabia has imposed a total travel ban on Kenya and suspended all visa categories after nine Ebola cases were confirmed. The Saudi Public Health Authority bars its citizens from travelling to Kenya and blocks arrivals from Kenya, including transit passengers. Kenya's first Ebola Bundibugyo case was confirmed on the sixth of October, in a man who travelled from the DRC through Uganda and died in Nairobi Hospital. By the twenty-sixth, Kenya had nine cases and two deaths, the second a sixty-five-year-old woman. The Health Ministry has stepped up tracing, testing and screening.

Turning to Kenya news, Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka has told Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna to wait for the opposition to decide its twenty twenty-seven presidential ticket. Speaking at Machakos Senator Agnes Kavindu's house-opening on Saturday, Kalonzo complained that few Wiper members turned up for Friday's launch of the Linda Mwananchi Movement headquarters in Lavington, unlike Rigathi Gachagua's branded delegation. The launch turned chaotic when Kalonzo rejected Eugene Wamalwa's endorsement of Sifuna, calling him just a party leader who must emerge through formal procedures. Chants of President Sifuna forced him to pause, before Sifuna calmed his supporters.

Staying with Kenya, former Chief Justice David Maraga is warning that Kenya is edging towards constitutional breakdown, after a court deadline for the Executive to comply with the two-thirds gender rule in Cabinet expired. The Cabinet remains short of the threshold set by the twenty ten Constitution. Maraga, who served from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty-one, led the Supreme Court that annulled the twenty seventeen presidential election. In September twenty twenty, he advised President Uhuru Kenyatta to dissolve Parliament for failing to enact gender rule legislation, a dissolution that was never carried out.

Also in Kenya, Senator Edwin Sifuna is rallying opposition leaders to field one candidate against President William Ruto in twenty twenty-seven, and his movement has opened a new office in Kwale County to build structures nationwide. The Constitution fixes the vote on the tenth of August, twenty twenty-seven. Ruto, sworn in after winning the twenty twenty-two election, would be seeking his second and final term. Coalition-building has decided Kenyan races since multiparty politics returned in nineteen ninety-one. The election will also fill all forty-seven governorships, Senate seats, the National Assembly and county assembly wards.

Still in Kenya, former Nation Media Group journalist Kitavi Mutua has died after a snake bite, a rare cause of death that has drawn wide attention across the country's media and social platforms. Reports did not disclose the county, the type of snake, or the date of the incident. Kenya is home to venomous snakes, including the black mamba and the puff adder, which is documented among the species responsible for the largest share of serious bites on the continent. Antivenom is the only specific treatment, and rural facilities are the least likely to stock it.

And that is your midday edition. The next bulletin is at 6 o'clock this evening. You can read every one of these stories in full, and much more besides, at Mwakilishi.com.

Have a good afternoon.

Bulletins are published twice a day, at midday and 6pm Eastern. Listen to past bulletins.