“The European Commission on Thursday pledged 42 million euros [$53 million] to Liberia’s president and Nobel peace laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to help halve one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates,” Agence France-Presse reports. “The announcement was made during talks between the Liberian leader and the E.U.’s development commissioner Andris Piebalgs,” the news agency notes (11/8). In particular, the funds “will be used for rehabilitating health centers, providing medical equipment, training health staff and many other activities aimed at improving health services in the country,” according to an E.U. press release. “The E.U. funding is part of the E.U.’s €1 billion [Millennium Development Goal (MDG)] initiative to foster global progress on the Millennium Development Goals before 2015,” the press release adds (11/9).