The Force Commander of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), Lt.-Gen. Chikadibia Isaac Obiakor, has said that UNMIL will remain resolute in maintaining the peace and stability of Sierra Leone and Liberia. The Force Commander gave this assurance to the peoples of the two countries in Freetown when he awarded UN peacekeeping medals to 250 officers of UNMIL’s Mongolian Guard Force stationed at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL).

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was a featured speaker Monday at the Women for a Better World Conference held in Niger. A special guest of the President of Niger, Mamadou Tandja, the President spoke candidly about Liberia’s challenges as they relate to gender development while also underscoring her Government’s triumphs in increasing the enrolment of female students as a part of Liberia’s compulsory primary education initiative. The President was addressing hundreds of women from the Continent of Africa and Spain, who converged on Niamey, Niger’s capital, to devise concrete actions to ensure that women are involved in the creation of a better world. The results of their commitments are listed in the Niamey Declaration.

Kula Borbor, a survivor of FGM [female genital mutilation] has received the 2008 Voices of Courage Award in New York, the United States of America in recognition of her outstanding efforts with the IRC in the fight against gender based violence in Liberia.

The UN Envoy in Liberia, Ms. Ellen Margrethe Løj, has commended the departing Seventh Senegalese Battalion in the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), after five years of successful peacekeeping duties in Liberia. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) was speaking in southeastern Maryland County, bordering Cote d’Iviore, when she awarded UN peacekeeping medals to the Senegalese, who will be replaced by Ethiopian peacekeepers.

Liberia Unification Party (LUP) Chairman Isaac F. Mannah has called on Liberians to reflect on yesterday’s Unification Day celebration and unify themselves for development and progress.

By: Jerome Toe
The Liberian judicial system is very unfair to the extent that poor people do not get justice, a Liberian prelate has claimed.

The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Ambassador Marie Jilo Barnett, has presented her letters of credence to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Receiving Ambassador Barnett’s letter during a ceremony at the Foreign Ministry, the President spoke of the long standing relations between the two neighboring countries, dating back to 1961 when Sierra Leone won its independence from Britain. The strong historical ties between Liberia and Sierra Leone, the President noted, resulted in the creation in 1973 of the Mano River Union (MRU), which has enhanced regional cooperation between the two countries and among the peoples of the sub-region.

The Management of Firestone Liberia is continuing the distribution of free rubber stumps to Liberian rubber farmers. The exercise is part of its Free Rubber Stumps Distribution which was launched few years ago in a bid to assist Liberian rubber farmers with free stumps to enable them replant their farms that were damaged as a result of the prolonged civil crisis in the country. The Company has distributed tens of thousands of free rubber saplings to Liberian farmers to help secure the future of thousands of families in the country.

The Ministry of Finance has dismissed seven of its employees for what the Ministry calls “acts of dishonesty in the conduct of government businesses.”

THE PEACEFUL PEOPLE of the People’s Republic of China have been hit by a nature disaster which has led to the loss of lives and massive destruction of cities.