NAIROBI, Jan 10 (IPS) - With less than two months before Kenyans head to the polls for what is shaping up to be the most competitive and polarised general election in the country's history, many fear that this East African country of over 40 million has not seen the last of electoral violence.

ATLANTA, Georgia, Jan 10 (IPS) - Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, one of the largest U.S. utilities in the U.S. south, plans to retire 15 coal and oil-fired energy generating units at four different plants, in the latest sign that a national campaign against coal is gaining traction.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 10 (IPS) - Mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever need clean, still water and warm night temperatures to reproduce and thrive. That is common knowledge, but now scientists in Brazil have managed to measure the relation between increased rainfall and temperatures and the risk of dengue epidemics in this city.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 10 (IPS) - Eight-year-old Muhammad Akram was forced to quit school when he was in the second grade, when the Taliban destroyed the small, government-run school that he and his brother had been attending.

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) - U.S. citizens suffer from poorer health than nearly all other industrialised countries, according to the first comprehensive government analysis on the subject, released Wednesday.

CARACAS, Jan 09 (IPS) - While Hugo Chávez is being treated for serious illness in Havana, the premise of government "continuity" is winning out in his home country, along with plans to postpone his swearing-in ceremony for a new term as president of Venezuela, due to take place on Thursday Jan. 10.

HAVANA, Jan 09 (IPS) - The Cuban sugar industry seems to be experiencing a rebirth thanks to an economic modernisation programme that has allowed for an injection of foreign capital as part of a strategy to strengthen and diversify this key sector.

SANTIAGO, Jan 09 (IPS) - Archaeologists, environmentalists and the National Monuments Council are battling the Dakar Rally, an annual off-road race, in northern Chile, an area with a rich archaeological and natural heritage that has already lost dozens of sites key to understanding Chilean and South American prehistory.

FREETOWN, Jan 09 (IPS) - The air is heavy with the smell of marijuana as Gibrilla (23) expertly rolls a large joint at the Members of Blood (M.O.B) gang base in a poor neighbourhood of Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown.