Mwakilishi News Bulletin - Midday Edition, Sunday 08 November 2026

Midday Edition for Sunday, 08 November 2026. Running time 8:18.

In this bulletin

Immigration News

1. USCIS guidance could bring neighbourhood investigations to citizenship applications

Kenya News

1. Kenyan families shelter Ethiopians fleeing conflict as supplies run short
2. Murkomen warns Mackenzie is radicalising inmates after two-hundred-year sentence
3. Four dead in head-on truck crash and fire on Mombasa Road
4. Nairobi water shutdown to hit hospitals and estates for twenty-four hours
5. Linda Mwananchi accuses Ruto administration after attack on Kalonzo convoy
6. Matiang'i, Gachagua and Kalonzo meet to quash feud over 2027 ticket

World News

1. Blasts reported on Iran's Qeshm Island and in southern cities

Transcript

This is the news from Mwakilishi.com.

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

Coming up.

New US citizenship guidance could bring neighbourhood investigations to Kenyan green card holders.

Murkomen says Mackenzie is radicalising inmates as government moves to isolate him.

Four dead as two trucks collide and burst into flames on Mombasa Road.

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

Turning to immigration news, US Citizenship and Immigration Services has issued new guidance that could subject citizenship applicants to investigations in their own neighbourhoods. The guidance, reported on the seventh of November, would let officers handling Form N four hundred, the naturalisation application, step beyond the standard interview room. Officers could visit the home address an applicant listed, question neighbours and landlords, and gather information about residence, household and conduct, as part of the government's review of the good moral character standard. The change raises the stakes for green card holders pursuing citizenship, including tens of thousands of Kenyans. It is the latest Trump administration measure to tighten the path to citizenship and expand vetting of immigrants living legally in the United States.

Turning to Kenya, families living along the border with Ethiopia are sheltering people who fled the fighting on the Ethiopian side, and The Star reports food and water in the host homes are running short. The arrivals crossed into Kenya to escape the conflict and were received into private households around Moyale, the border town in Marsabit County, rather than into any formal settlement. Host families have been feeding and sheltering them alongside their own family members, drawing on supplies they had at home, and the strain is now showing. Separately, the Daily Nation reports the same conflict has ground Moyale to a halt, bringing the crossing to a standstill. Moyale straddles the border and is the main crossing point between the two countries.

Also in Kenya, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen says intelligence reports show convicted Shakahola cult leader Paul Mackenzie is trying to radicalise fellow inmates. Speaking in Kakamega on Sunday, Murkomen said the government will isolate Mackenzie within correctional facilities to stop him influencing other prisoners. The warning came two days after the High Court in Mombasa jailed him for two hundred years over the deaths of one hundred and ninety-one people, nearly all of them children, in the Shakahola Forest tragedy. Justice Diana Kavedza-Mochache imposed consecutive one-hundred-year terms for one hundred and eighty-three counts of murder by starvation and eight of direct homicide. Twenty-six co-accused received one hundred to one hundred and sixty years, and two plea bargains ten years. Separate cases over manslaughter, radicalisation and terrorism remain ongoing.

Still in Kenya, four people died on Sunday after two trucks collided head-on and burst into flames at Kiunduani in Makindu, on the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway. The fire engulfed both vehicles and trapped the occupants inside. Police and witness accounts differed on the victims, some saying the two drivers, a woman and her child, others the two drivers and a pregnant woman. Police are investigating the cause. The crash adds to a string of deadly incidents that have pushed highway fatalities past forty since October, amid a nine point two per cent nationwide rise in road fatalities reported by the National Transport and Safety Authority. The Kanga collision in late October claimed twenty-two or twenty-five lives by differing accounts, and the Salama crash earlier that month killed seventeen.

Elsewhere in Kenya, Nairobi faces a twenty-four-hour water shutdown from eight on Monday morning to eight on Tuesday morning. The Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company says the cut is needed to install new pipe connections near Kianda School along Waiyaki Way. Affected hospitals include Kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi Hospital, Mbagathi Hospital and Forces Memorial Hospital. The Department of Defence, Langata Women's Prison and Uhuru Park are also hit. Estates facing the cut include Westlands, Parklands, Kilimani, Lavington, Upper Hill, Madaraka, Kibera and areas along Ngong Road. The utility asked customers to use water sparingly and apologised for the inconvenience. It is the third major disruption in recent weeks, after a twenty-nine-hour shutdown from November the fifth to the sixth affected Kasarani, Roysambu, Zimmerman and Kayole.

In Kenyan politics now, the Linda Mwananchi movement has accused President William Ruto's administration of fuelling political violence and intolerance, after an attack on a campaign caravan led by Wiper Patriotic Front leader Kalonzo Musyoka in Migori County. The movement, whose name in Kiswahili means protect the ordinary citizen, says the administration is stoking violence as politicians mobilise for the next general election, set by the constitutional calendar for August the tenth, twenty twenty-seven. Musyoka is a veteran politician who served as foreign minister and as vice president from two thousand and eight to two thousand and thirteen. The attack unfolded in Migori, a county in the Nyanza region bordering Tanzania, and accounts of the assault have not specified who carried it out.

Staying with the opposition, heavyweights Fred Matiang'i, Rigathi Gachagua and Kalonzo Musyoka held a closed-door meeting in Nairobi on Sunday morning, seeking to paper over differences over the twenty twenty-seven presidential race. It came hours before separate rallies in Nanyuki and Kitengela. Tensions boiled over after Gachagua suggested a three-way pact between himself, Kalonzo and Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna had the numbers to defeat President Ruto. Matiang'i slammed the plan as majoritarian arrogance, insisting the candidate must emerge through inclusive consultation rather than boardroom deals. Democratic Party leader Justin Muturi accused Gachagua of political bullying, and Gachagua hit back from his Wamunyoro residence, saying nobody should speak to him like a child. Matiang'i later shared a photo of the three leaders, writing, brothers will always put Kenya first.

Turning to world news, blasts have been reported on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz and in the southern Iranian cities of Jask, Sirik and Bandar Abbas. Iranian state media reported the explosions, carried in Al Jazeera's live coverage of the war between Washington and Tehran. The reports gave no cause for the blasts, no casualty figures, no details of damage, and no claim of responsibility in the early coverage. All four locations lie in or near the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman. Qeshm is Iran's largest island, and Bandar Abbas is its principal southern port. The United States has meanwhile moved to block land supply routes into Iran, and the strait is one of the world's most important shipping chokepoints.

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.

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