AFP                                                                                                                    March 6, 2015

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AFP) — Sierra Leone's Vice President Sam Sumana was expelled from the ruling party on Friday as he spent a sixth day confined to his home under Ebola quarantine.

                                                  Vice-President Samuel Sam-Sumana

The ruling All People's Congress told a news conference in Freetown the action was unconnected to the outbreak and was the result of an investigation lasting several weeks into Sumana's conduct and background.

"The VP has said he was a Muslim but investigations found this to be incorrect," said the party's secretary-general Osman Yansaneh as he laid out a number of accusations against the vice president.

Yansaneh said Sumana's claim to hold a degree from a US university had turned out to be false, and that he was also accused of being responsible for "frequent unrest" in his eastern home district of Kono.

The fourth allegation against Sumana was that he was plotting to set up a breakaway political party, Yansaneh told reporters at the party headquarters.

ASSOCIATED PRESS   by Tom McElroy                                                             Feb. 25, 2015

NEW YORK — A doctor who contracted the deadly Ebola virus and rode the subway system and dined out before he developed symptoms said the media and politicians could have done a better job by educating people on the science of it instead of focusing on their fears.

 "When we look back on this epidemic, I hope we'll recognize that fear caused our initial hesitance to respond — and caused us to respond poorly when we finally did," Dr. Craig Spencer wrote in an article published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. (See link below.)

Spencer, an emergency room physician, was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 23, days after returning from treating patients in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. His was the first Ebola case in the nation's largest city, spurring an effort to contain anxieties along with the virus. He was treated at a hospital, recovered and was released on Nov. 11.

UPDATE: Liberia court suspends ban on mass gatherings in Monrovia

REUTERS  By James Harding Giahyue                                                         Dec. 7, 2014                                                                                    

MONROVIA --Liberia's top court issued a stay on a government order banning public gatherings in the capital ahead of Senate elections next week that was imposed because electioneering risks spreading Ebola, Information Minister Lewis Brown said on Sunday.

Presiding Associate Justice Philip

On Monday, the court will hear a petition by civil society groups, prominent citizens and some political parties who seek a delay to the Senate elections, now set for Dec. 16, until Ebola is eradicated.

On Wednesday, the court will hear a separate petition by independent Senate candidate Robert Sirleaf, the son of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

issued the stay pending two Supreme Court hearings this week, Brown said.

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Image: President Obama meets with President Xi Jinping. Photo Credit: Pete Souza/White House

environmentalleader.com - November 13th, 2014

The US and China set ambitious climate change goals on Wednesday, with President Obama pledging to cut US greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Chinese president Xi Jinping announced targets to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 or sooner and to increase China’s non-fossil fuel share of energy to around 20 percent by 2030.

The announcement was met with praise from environmentalists and business groups.

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