The World Health Organisation has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.

Africans battling to contain the spread of ebola will have to wait for months until a potentially life-saving experimental drug used on two Americans infected with the dreaded disease would be manufactured, officials said.

Nigerian authorities rushed to obtain isolation tents in anticipation of more Ebola infections as they disclosed five more cases of the virus and a death.

No one knows just how many people Patrick Sawyer came into contact with the day he boarded a flight in Liberia, had a stopover in Ghana, changed planes in Togo, and then arrived in Nigeria, where authorities say he died days later from Ebola, one of the deadliest diseases known to man.

The Nigerian city of Lagos shut down and quarantined a hospital where a man died of Ebola in the first recorded case of the highly infectious disease in Africa’s most populous country.

George Soros, the 83-year-old billionaire investor, philanthropist and active supporter of liberal political causes, married health care and education consultant Tamiko Bolton at the weekend.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has left Nigeria after human rights lawyers and civil rights activists demanded his arrest, a Sudanese diplomat has said.

FACED with a barrage of criticism when it chose a panda as one of it’s 12 female “faces of the year 2011”, a haughty BBC spokesperson wondered what all the fuss was about.

An election that was supposed to solidify peace in Liberia has been marred by dismal turnout after the opposition went ahead with a boycott despite last-minute appeals from the US and the UN.

Violence has broken out at opposition headquarters in Liberia, killing at least one person hours before a presidential run-off today.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee used different tactics to confront thugs and killers in war-ravaged Liberia.

BRIAN COWEN has been called a lot of things since becoming Taoiseach, and not all of them nice.

All Africans must speak out about injustices in places like Zimbabwe, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said.

Robert Mugabe’s brazen power grab in Zimbabwe’s election saga has left cracks in one of African leaders’ unspoken rules – never turn on one of your own.

Zimbabwean government and opposition officials met in South Africa in a bid to find a way out of their country’s troubles following the recent presidential election run-off.

Actress Nicole Kidman praised a United Nations fund set up 10 years ago for initiatives to end violence against women worldwide, saying it had made a difference to countless people.

Britain circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution yesterday that would move the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor from Sierra Leone to the Netherlands because of the danger he would pose by remaining in the West Africa region.

Trial in Africa is apparently too risky for a man accused of fomenting war across west Africa – and believed to have the support and money to create more trouble.

Africa’s first elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has been sworn in as president of war-battered Liberia, promising a clean break with the west African nation’s violent past and pledging to rebuild.