Reporters on the Job

from the January 3, 2008 edition

• Calmer in Nairobi: Staff writer Scott Baldauf says that there were more signs of normal life in the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, Wednesday (see story). "Most small shops are still closed. But people were moving around, visiting relatives and shopping. There were long lines of people stretching out of the large supermarkets. People were buying food, stocking up for what some estimate could be weeks of disturbances," he says.

Kibera, a large slum on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, is where the real battles have gone on, he says. "There you see shops still smouldering. Torched cars are everywhere. The shops have been looted. You see people leaving, carrying their belongings on their heads and in pushcarts. You also see the odd, unsmiling individual with a machete," says Scott.

To date, Kenya's majority Kikuyu tribe has born the brunt of the attacks. "Many are moving out of the neighborhoods where they are minorities, back to their home villages. In the Kikuyu majority areas, there have been almost no attacks on minority tribes. Most of the minority tribal members, for example the Luhyas, have been killed in clashes with the police," says Scott.

Monitor story Follow-up

• www.myfootballclub.co.uk: On June 8, 2007, the Monitor reported that Will Brooks had set up a website so that soccer fans could buy – and manage online – their own soccer club ("English fans pool cash to buy their own soccer team").

Now, some 53,000 people, including 1,500 from the US, have an agreement in principle to purchase Ebbsfleet United, a minor league club in southeast England. The website has built up a fund of £1,375,000 ($2,728,000).

– David Clark Scott

World editor

Raptor release: A Japanese girl let a goshawk go Wednesday during the annual New Year's falconry demonstration in Tokyo, Japan. Junji Kurokawa/AP More cultural snapshots

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