Liberia

News of their husbands' deaths came to Cynthia Yormie and Suzana Vaye in a simple sentence, uttered by a concerned community leader. Yormie and Vaye had spent almost two weeks seeking the whereabouts of their spouses, deputy ministers who hadn't been heard from since June 5 after having been detained by state security officials. So a community elder went to the government seeking information. "Your husbands are no more," the elder said when he returned.

Liberians call her "da woma," in their soft patois where the word endings seem to die in the steamy West African heat. "Da woma', she tra' her bes'," they tell you earnestly, if you inquire about the state of affairs in a country shredded by a 14-year civil war. "She tra'." She's trying. One hip-hop song played on Monrovia radio these days just calls her Ma. At times, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state, seems like a mild, smiling, grandmotherly figure.

The skeletal remains of hundreds of people killed 15 years ago near the small Liberian village of Kpolokpai were transported in wheelbarrows to a marked mass grave Sunday where they were buried in a formal ceremony. The church service honoring the dead is intended to try to put to rest this particular chapter in Liberia's 14-year civil war, which left an estimated 250,000 people dead. Mourners, including church leaders and farmers, stood with their hands folded as the remains were lowered into a 10-foot-wide pit. Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined that the Kpolokpai massacre in 1994 was led by fighters of the Liberia Peace Council, a rebel group fighting Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia.

The children had nicknames based on their grimmest deeds -- like "Castrator" or "Laughing and Killing." Some dyed their hair bright orange. Others fought naked to terrify the enemy. Some girl soldiers fought in their underwear because they thought it would make them magical and bulletproof. They carried the scars of secret initiation rites and wore neck charms that they believed would protect them from enemy bullets, though one 17-year-old, Isaac T.

Their playground is a sandy, fly-infested yard, their bed a dingy foam mattress on a concrete floor. Their bath is a tin pail or plastic bucket that they wash in outside. When hunger bites, there is typically little or nothing to eat. It is a wretched existence for Nymah Sumo, 7, and Doretha Rubben, 6, who live at a squalid children's home in this battle-scarred capital. But it is an existence they hope to soon escape.

The United Nations food aid agency has launched an emergency operation to fly food into the Liberian capital of Monrovia, where hundreds of thousands of people desperately need assistance. The first consignment of half a ton of high-energy biscuits, which arrived in the city Saturday from Sierra Leone, is enough to provide an emergency ration to about 4,000 people, the U.N. World Food Program said Sunday.

Liberia has charged the former head of a transitional government with embezzling $1.3 million during two years in office in the wake of a devastating 14-year civil war, Information Minister Lawrence Bropleh said. Justice Ministry officials had questioned former businessman Gyude Bryant last month concerning an audit by West African regional bloc ECOWAS, which had uncovered evidence of widespread graft during his 2003-05 power-sharing administration.

Liberia handed over the body of warlord Sam Bockarie to neighboring Sierra Leone, which has indicted him for atrocities. Bockarie, a former disco dancer and hairdresser who became one of the region's most feared rebel commanders, was killed in a shootout with Liberian government forces May 6. Since then, Sierra Leone's U.N.-backed special court for war crimes had demanded that the corpse be handed over for independent identification. The court is probing crimes such as amputations and mass rape.

A former bodyguard for Charles Taylor gave an insider's view Wednesday of the former Liberian president's rule, testifying that he funneled arms, fighters, communications equipment and cash to rebels in Sierra Leone who were notorious for their brutality.

The United Nations' first women-only peacekeeping contingent -- made up of about 100 Indian police officers -- arrived in Liberia, officials said. Ben Malor, spokesman for the U.N.'s 15,000-strong peacekeeping force in the West African country, said the female force would be stationed in the capital, Monrovia. Women have served in many U.N. peacekeeping forces, but this is the first all-female group.

The skeletal remains of hundreds of people killed 15 years ago near the small Liberian village of Kpolokpai were transported in wheelbarrows to a marked mass grave Sunday where they were buried in a formal ceremony. The church service honoring the dead is intended to try to put to rest this particular chapter in Liberia's 14-year civil war, which left an estimated 250,000 people dead. Mourners, including church leaders and farmers, stood with their hands folded as the remains were lowered into a 10-foot-wide pit. Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined that the Kpolokpai massacre in 1994 was led by fighters of the Liberia Peace Council, a rebel group fighting Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor ordered his militias to eat the flesh of captured enemies and United Nations soldiers, a former close aide testified at Taylor's war crimes trial in The Hague. Joseph "ZigZag" Marzah, who described himself as Taylor's former death squad commander, gave graphic details of atrocities in Liberia and Sierra Leone at the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. He has described how he killed so many men, women and children that he lost count, and said he had slit open the stomachs of pregnant women on Taylor's orders.

A former bodyguard for Charles Taylor gave an insider's view Wednesday of the former Liberian president's rule, testifying that he funneled arms, fighters, communications equipment and cash to rebels in Sierra Leone who were notorious for their brutality.

A "blood diamond" expert offered the first testimony in the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor on Monday, and a Sierra Leone miner said in videotaped evidence that laughing rebels hacked off his hands and burned his family. The trial before the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up to try those behind the 1991-2002 civil war, resumed after a six-month adjournment that began in June when Taylor boycotted proceedings and fired his lawyer.

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor pleaded not guilty to a new U.S. indictment charging him with being involved in brutal killings and torture in the west African nation from 1999 to 2002. Charles McArthur Emmanuel, 30, a U.S. citizen, commanded the "Demon Forces," which the indictment said targeted those perceived to be opponents of the government. A trial is scheduled for January.

Judges in The Hague postponed until January the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor as lawyers argued over whether victims of atrocities in Sierra Leone should testify. Taylor, 59, is accused of instigating murder, rape and mutilation in a quest for diamonds during the civil war in Sierra Leone. He has pleaded not guilty.

The government said it had lifted a six-year moratorium on the diamond trade put in place after former President Charles Taylor was accused of using "blood diamonds" to fuel civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. "People can start applying for mining, selling and broker licenses" for diamonds on Monday, a government official said. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Liberia's diamonds in May 2001 and the Liberian government complied by placing a moratorium on all mining. The U.N.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor appeared in court Tuesday for the first time since the start of his trial for atrocities committed during Sierra Leone's bloody decade-long civil war. Wearing a blue suit and yellow tie, Taylor appeared 20 minutes late at a procedural hearing during which judges for the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone explained why they agreed to postpone hearing the first prosecution witnesses until Aug. 20.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor again boycotted his war crimes trial in The Hague. Because he has fired his court-funded lawyer, he was not represented in court, so judges adjourned the trial until July 3. Taylor complained that he lacked funds to mount an adequate defense against charges of arming Sierra Leone rebels and orchestrating a murderous campaign during that country's 10-year civil war. The court offered to give Taylor $50,000 a month for his defense.

They come in broad daylight, with guns, machetes, knives and buckets of acid. The invaders of Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire's rubber plantation in Liberia are hunting what they call "elephant meat": To them, the company is so big that anyone can take a hunk of flesh and no one will notice. Some people who stand in their way get hacked to death. Others, such as William Brown, a 42-year-old security officer, have had acid hurled on their face and bodies.