Liberia

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) got swift criticism when she tried to accuse President Donald Trump of being “racist” and “embarrassing” during his meeting with African leaders at the White House on Wednesday.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) this week canceled a $17 million project providing “tax policy advice to Liberia,” Elon Musk — who is heading up the DOGE efforts — announced this week.

Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio declared a national emergency on Friday over surging abuse of kush, an addictive drug that can be manufactured from powdered human bones. Addicts have been digging up graves to get the bones they need, prompting the police to station guards around cemeteries in the capital city of Freetown.

A Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian port of Odesa hit a Liberian-flagged freighter, killing a port worker and injuring three crewmen.

The White House on Monday announced $55 billion in economic aid, health care, and security support for Africa. President Joe Biden hosted a meeting for African leaders that began on Tuesday, during which the White House promised more details of the massive benefits package would be divulged.

Front Page Africa on Thursday described a new wrinkle in Liberia’s ongoing struggle with female genital mutilation (FGM): “traditional leaders” of tribal communities who saw an opportunity to abduct children and demand ransoms to release them without mutilation.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) co-hosted an event in Liberia on Tuesday with the Communist Party of China on the “right to development” – less than a week after the head of the office, Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, absolved China of years of accusations of genocide at home.

A Defense Department budget approved by Republican and Democrat lawmakers gives amnesty to at least 4,000 Liberian nationals who would otherwise have to self-deport from the United States, Rep. Gosar (R-AZ) says. 

Senate Republicans and Democrats approved a defense budget for Fiscal Year 2020 after slipping into it an amnesty for nearly 1,000 Liberian nationals who will now be eligible for American citizenship.

LONDON (AP) — A nurse who used Voodoo rituals to intimidate her victims has been convicted in England of trafficking five African women to work as prostitutes in Germany.

International public health authorities confirmed 52 cases and 22 deaths in the ongoing outbreak of Ebola virus in Democratic Republic of Congo this week, where locals’ fear that medical professionals are intentionally spreading the disease has triggered at least two cases of families stealing patients out of hospitals.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has documented 19 deaths and 39 potential or confirmed cases of Ebola beginning on April 4, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which deployed extensive medical assets to the country this week in the hope of preventing a devastating outbreak on the scale of the one that ravaged West Africa in 2014.

President Donald Trump is quietly sending a few thousand Liberians homeward after 20-plus years of temporary residency in the United States. 

President Trump is ending temporary amnesty for nearly 1,000 Liberian nationals who have been allowed to stay in the United States for almost three decades.

In his first annual message to the legislature in January – roughly equivalent in ceremonial significance to a State of the Union address – Liberian President George Manneh Weah called for eliminating the “unnecessary, racist, and inappropriate” constitutional clause that bars non-blacks from becoming full citizens of his nation. Liberia’s top Muslim cleric responded this week by warning that black citizens would be marginalized and oppressed if the rules are changed.

The former soccer star George Weah has been elected president of Liberia at his second attempt, defeating vice-president Joseph Boakai in a second-round runoff with 61.5% of the vote.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Sunday with West African leaders in Liberia for discussions on boosting ties.

LONDON (AP) — A woman has been arrested in London for committing suspected war crimes during civil war in Liberia.

A bride and groom headed to Costa Rica for their wedding got kicked off a United flight set to leave Texas on Saturday afternoon.

A far-left Democratic activist and Fox News analyst Jehmu Greene has become the seventh person to enter the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Contents: The Gambia’s president prepares for war with Senegal on January 19; Congo’s president Joseph Kabila refuses to step down after losing election

Actress Meryl Streep and First Lady Michelle Obama joined Princess Lalla Salma in Morocco on Tuesday night for a traditional dinner to break the fast of Ramadan, after the three spent the afternoon speaking with local high school girls about the importance of female education and empowerment.

Actresses Meryl Streep and Frieda Pinto are set to join First Lady Michelle Obama and First Daughters Sasha and Malia Obama for a trip to Liberia and Morocco in late June to promote the White House’s “Let Girls Learn” female education initiative.

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to transfer $510 million in money allocated to fighting the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in west Africa to preventing a similar outbreak of Zika in the United States, officials announced Wednesday.

A second case of Ebola has been confirmed in Liberia months after the country had been declared free from transmissions, health officials said Sunday.

In west Africa, trust in traditional herbalists significantly worsened the outlook in the unprecedented Ebola outbreak of 2014-2015. In Tanzania, authorities banned witch doctors entirely after years of attacks on the nation’s “magical” albino population. Now Kenya has taken a bold new move in eradicating the practice of unlicensed medicine: letting certified physicians advertise their services in public.

The government of Guinea confirmed Wednesday that five people had died after contracting the Ebola virus in the southern border state of Macenta, prompting a closing of the border and a manhunt for hundreds of villagers suspected of having had contact with the virus.

The government of Guinea has confirmed four cases of Ebola and two deaths, the first in months following the official conclusion of the 2014 outbreak in that country that took the lives of over 11,000 people.

The government of Sierra Leone has quarantined more than 100 people after the body of a 22-year-old student tested positive for Ebola. The announcement arrived hours after the World Health Organization announced that the outbreak beginning in 2014 was officially over.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak of Ebola virus that began in February 2014 officially over, nearly two years after doctors diagnosed the first case of Ebola in this outbreak in a rural town in Guinea.

The men recruited to incinerate the bodies of those killed by the Ebola outbreak in Liberia last year mostly live together in squalor, succumbing to alcohol abuse, as their community rejects them for being involved in the taboo treatment of the dead.

The government of Rwanda has reinstated mandatory Ebola screening and self-reporting procedures at its airports, as Liberia imposes regular temperature checks at school to monitor any new potential cases following the death of 15-year-old Nathan Gbotoe of the disease in late November.

Two months after being declared Ebola-free, the west African nation of Liberia has confirmed the death of a boy who succumbed to the virus, forcing the government to quarantine his family and place hundreds under surveillance.

(Reuters) A new case of Ebola has been found in Liberia, a country declared free of the disease on Sept. 3, a senior United Nations official said on Friday.

A new study by the World Health Organization has found that the Ebola virus can live in the semen of survivors for at least nine months, dramatically increasing the risk of sexual transmission of the disease in west Africa, where an outbreak that began in March 2014 has not yet been fully contained.

As west Africa struggles to recover from an ongoing Ebola crisis and the continent’s poorest nations work to develop medical infrastructures, The New York Times warns that mental health treatment in much of nations like Togo and Ghana amounts to constraining patients with chains and taking them to spiritual consultants.