Liberia

On the outskirts of Monrovia, a film crew knuckled down to work. Beyond the urban sprawl, they were distanced, if not safe, from the Ebola crisis playing out in the city. Liberia was already on a path to becoming the worst-affected nation in the West African epidemic, and nearly 5,000 lives would be lost by the time the World Health Organization gave the all clear. It was September 2014, and the end of the outbreak was not yet in sight.

Reports last week said that cyber-attacks had repeatedly overwhelmed this link making net access intermittent.

The authority said there was "no data to substantiate" the claim.

But it said one telecommunications company serving half the nation's mobile users did suffer attacks that repeatedly limited access.

No downtime

Recurrent attacks up to 3 November flooded the cable link with data, making net access intermittent.

Researchers said the attacks showed hackers trying different ways to use massive networks of hijacked machines to overwhelm high-value targets.

Experts said Liberia was attacked by the same group that caused web-wide disruption on 21 October.

Those attacks were among the biggest ever seen and made it hard to reach big web firms such as Twitter, Spotify and Reddit.

Short bursts

More than 4,800 people have died in Liberia since the outbreak began in West Africa in late 2013. The country celebrated what it thought was the end of Ebola in May, but then six more cases emerged the following month.

That started the clock over — 42 days or two incubation periods of 21 days — before Liberia could return to being free of transmission. On Thursday, officials announced they had made it without any more cases.

The woman in her early 20s who died on July 12 was linked to the 17-year-old boy who died last month, Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah told The Associated Press. Three other confirmed cases are being treated in Monrovia, he said.

Some of the more than 120 people under observation in Nedowein, southeast of Monrovia, could be discharged once they complete 21 days of quarantine and show no signs of infection, he said.

Ebola has devastated their economies, severely damaged the social fabric of their nations and killed more than 11,000 people.

Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, speaking on behalf of the three countries, told a high-level U.N. conference that international support will give millions of people a chance to rebuild their lives and promote regional stability and world trade.

"The world as a whole has a great stake in how we together respond to this global threat," she said, adding that "virus diseases, just like terrorism, know no national boundaries."

Dr. Francis Kateh said Thursday that the number of confirmed Ebola cases has risen to five, including the 17-year-old teen who died of the disease on June 28.

He said the newest patients, a boy and a girl, were brought to a treatment center Wednesday from the same Nedowein community where the teen died, some 30 miles (48 kilometers) outside the capital, Monrovia.

Dr. Kateh said all four confirmed patients are admitted at a treatment center near Monrovia.

The West African country previously succeeded in containing the outbreak, despite being initially the hardest hit with more than 4,800 deaths. The last recorded case before this latest emergence was on March 20, according to the World Health Organization.

"We will contain it quickly because of where we are in the learning curve as far as Ebola is concerned," said Dr. Philip Ireland at the John F. Kennedy Medical Center in the capital, Monrovia.

The infected person was moved to Monrovia, said deputy health minister Tolbert Nyenswah.

Between 100 and 200 Ebola center workers stormed the Ministry of Health in eastern Monrovia on Wednesday demanding hazard pay that they said they haven't received since the country was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization on May 9.

Protesters turned off the building generator, an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, told The Associated Press.

"Liberia has got a re-infection of Ebola," Tolbert Nyenswah, deputy health minister and head of Liberia's Ebola response team, told The Associated Press.

The boy died at his home and was buried safely to avoid spread of the disease, said Nyenswah. Nedowein is close to the country's international airport, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of the capital, Monrovia.

Teams are investigating how the boy became infected, Nyenswah said. The area is not near Liberia's borders with Sierra Leone and Guinea, neighboring countries that still have Ebola cases.