Mixed reactions have marred Liberia following the recent announcement by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf that she will run for re-election in 2011. Ms Sirleaf has said that she had not realised before the 2005 polls how much rebuilding work needed to be done in Liberia. She became Africa's first elected female head of state after winning 53 percent of the vote.

As sports fans gear up for the NFL Super Bowl next week, the Halftime show sponsor, Bridgestone/Firestone, continues to exploit workers on its rubber plantation in Liberia. The majority of workers who labor as “rubber tappers” must carry two heavy buckets of raw latex weighing 75 pounds each on both ends of a stick on their back for miles.

An investigation by the government in Liberia has concluded that the Firestone Rubber Plantation Company has polluted local water sources. The three-month investigation found that a plant south-east of the capital Monrovia was responsible for high levels of orthophosphate in creeks.

In Liberia citizens’ reaction has been mixed to a 16 September UN Security Council decision extending the UN peacekeeping mission (UNMIL) to assist with the planned 2011 presidential and legislative elections.

The Liberian leader president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has filed a lawsuit against the New Broom newspaper for libel, amounting to $5 million in damages. The paper recently accused president Sirleaf of receiving US$2 million as kickback to favor a company for control of the Cavalla Robber Plantation in the south eastern region of Liberia.

Respect for human rights must be central to police work, a senior United Nations official in Liberia has told the new members of an elite unit within the West African country's police force as she warned them never to misuse their strength and power. Eighty officers from the Liberia National Police (LNP) have completed a three-month intensive training programme to join the force's Emergency Response Unit (ERU), joining just over 200 others who have finished their training since courses began in mid-2008.

As Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) moves to address the country's troubled past, Lansana Gberie is entirely confused by the commission's direction and intent. With some US$8 million plus spent on the TRC over a two-year period, considerably more would have been expected from the commission's report than mere woolly, dull assertions. The report's dismissal of the views informing its findings undermines its relevance, Gberie argues, and is only saved from complete insignificance by the sheer outrageousness of its recommendations.

Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, claimed the war crimes case against him was built on lies and deceit as he took the stand as a witness in his trial at a special court in The Hague. Mr Taylor, 61, is accused of orchestrating a campaign of terror in Sierra Leone to gain control of the neighbouring country’s diamond resources, using methods including murder, sexual slavery and the recruitment of child soldiers during a decade-long civil war.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has ended marathon hearings into atrocities committed during the Liberian civil war, recommending stiff penalties, in a final report, likely to affect some 150 Liberians, including President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The report recommended that 50 Liberians, including Johnson-Sirleaf, be barred for 30 years from contesting and occupying political office in the country.

The World Bank has approved US$3.5 million for Liberia for its Costal Defense programme which will target three cities including Monrovia, the capital City of Liberia and two other major cities in the country, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) communiqué has said. According to the EPA communiqué, the fund is also targeted to reduce the impact of climate change and build capacity for Liberians on the magnitude of funds needed to tackle climate change.

The trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor will continue on 13 July at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone has announced."The lawyers for the former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, will begin their defence against charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity on 13 July," the court said in a statement.

A US-based international Christian relief organisation says it believes more than 90% of its aid to Liberia went missing in a massive fraud scam. World Vision's Vice-President Geoff Ward told the BBC the losses came to more than $1m and pledged to make "every effort" to avoid a repeat. A former senior World Vision official in Liberia and two other workers have been charged over the alleged fraud.

Three brightly-clothed women walk slowly around the fallen, charred trees strewn haphazardly across the blackened clearing, each carrying seashells filled with indigenous rice seed to bury in the rich soil. The women belong to a local cooperative, Women and Children Development Secretariat (WOCDES), and wake early for the 5-km hike down the dirt road to their farm near Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County, in Liberia’s vast forest region on the Ivorian border.

Judges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone have rejected a request by Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, that he be acquitted of war crimes charges. The special tribunal meeting on Monday in The Hague said he must account for allegations of waging a campaign to terrorise Sierra Leone through mass murder, rape and mutilation.

The number of women dying in childbirth in Liberia has nearly doubled since the 1980s, according to a recent UN report that has policymakers calling for urgent attention to reproductive healthcare. While the report shows encouraging trends in infant and child survival, it puts maternal mortality at 994 women per 100,000 live births in 2007 compared to 578 in 1987.

Liberia has significantly reduced its foreign debt by buying back $1.2 billion in outstanding government debt at a discount of nearly 97 percent of face value, the steepest ever negotiated on developing country commercial debt, the country has announced. The deal, according to the World Bank report, was concluded with the payment of $38 million to retire 25 outstanding commercial claims. The World Bank contributed half of the money through the International Development Association (IDA) Debt Reduction Facility, and Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States are said to have contributed the other half.

Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger. He take runs the “Daily News”, a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn’t afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand. Alfred serves as a reminder to the rest of us, that simple is often better, just because it works. The lack of electricity never throws him off.

For three days and nights 28-year-old Comfort Wilson rode in the back of a pickup truck from her rural village in Liberia to the capital, Monrovia. She came with 30 women from her village sleeping in the truck bed, eating food they prepared at home. They came, along with women from Mozambique, Guatemala, Kosovo and 25 other countries, as a global show of support for the idea that more women must be involved in building and maintaining peace.

In the cramped basement of a public housing apartment block in New York's Staten Island, 25 minutes by ferry from Manhattan's financial district, a small group of mostly volunteer staff are preparing to open the doors of health clinic in an area that recently saw the closure of two local hospitals. The weekly clinic caters to a cross section of the blue-collar Park Hill neighbourhood; day labourers, newly arrived immigrants and former refugees, most of the latter from Liberia.

Former Mintek CEO and one-time Department of Trade and Industry DDG, Dr Paul Jourdan, played a role in making the South African government the custodian of mineral rights in South Africa. Until the new regime was enforced, mineral rights were the preserve of the private sector in South Africa, which was out of kilter with what pertained elsewhere in the Western world.