Liberia's main public university said on Wednesday all 25,000 applicants for the new academic year had failed its entrance exam, prompting the president to describe poor education standards in the impoverished nation as a "national emergency".

The University of Liberia, which educates more than half of the country's students in the capital Monrovia, said it had been forced to admit 1,600 failed candidates for the new term which begins next month.

The international court handling the appeal of Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor against his conviction for war crimes in Sierra Leone announced Tuesday it would deliver its judgement next month.

Taylor, 65, was found guilty last year of lending support to Sierra Leonean rebels who waged a terror campaign during a civil war that claimed 120,000 lives between 1991 and 2001, in exchange for "blood diamonds" mined by slave labor.

Liberia granted 300 Sierra Leonean refugees citizenship on Thursday at a ceremony to mark World Refugee Day.

Around 100,000 people fled Sierra Leone to neighboring Liberia in 1991 when rebels from the Revolutionary United Front attempted to overthrow the government of Joseph Momoh, starting an 11-year civil war that left 50,000 dead.

A plane carrying a military delegation from Guinea to attend an annual armed forces day in Liberia crashed Monday in the Liberian town of Charlesville, Monrovia said.

"There has been a plane crash in Charlesville at about five miles (eight kilometers) from the Roberts International Airport," said Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown.

A UN-backed war crimes court sentenced Liberia's former president Charles Taylor to 50 years in jail for arming Sierra Leone rebels in return for "blood diamonds".

"The trial chamber unanimously sentences you to a single term of imprisonment for 50 years on all counts," said Special Court for Sierra Leone Judge Richard Lussick at the court based just outside The Hague.

Sierra Leone's U.N.-backed war crimes court will hear arguments Wednesday on the sentencing of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, who has been convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Prosecutors before the Special Court for Sierra Leone are to say why they think Taylor, 64, should receive an 80-year term in a British jail, while his defense, which claims that his conviction was "bought," will argue in mitigation.

Liberia's ex-president Charles Taylor, found guilty by an international court Thursday of war crimes in Sierra Leone, will serve his prison sentence in Britain, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

The location and category of the prison will depend on the details of the verdict. "How strong the verdict is will determine the category of prison he is held in," the spokeswoman told Agence France Presse.

The beat is infectious U.S.-style hip hop but the rhymes come straight from the streets of Monrovia, a city which for years has had very little to sing about.

In a sound-proof recording booth in the centre of Liberia's teeming capital, sweat beads on the forehead of 30-year-old Jonathan Koffa -- aka Takun J -- as he spits out a stream of improvised lyrics into a microphone.

A cargo ship grounded off the New Zealand coast since October has split in two, spilling sea containers and debris and sparking fears of a fresh oil spill, maritime officials said Sunday.

The wreck of the Greek-owned Rena was described as New Zealand's worst maritime environmental disaster even before the rear section of the ship, lashed by pounding seas, broke away overnight. The ship previously spilled heavy fuel oil that fouled pristine North Island beaches and killed up to 20,000 seabirds, and despite salvage efforts nearly 400 tons of oil remain onboard.

Liberian incumbent Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's party vowed Sunday that she will contest a run-off presidential vote even if the opposition boycotts the polls, fanning fears of new violence in the war-torn west African country.

"If the opposition wants to boycott the process, that will not stop the process," Unity Party campaign director Musa Bility told AFP after the opposition on Saturday rejected as "flawed" provisional results of the October 11 vote placing Sirleaf in the lead.