Ellen Johnson SirleafLast week it was announced that his year's Nobel Prize for Peace was going to three women "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work." Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, shared the prize with her sister in disarmament, Leymah Gbowee, and Yemeni journalist Tawakel Karman.

Shall we talk about why this is awesome?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 72, has transformed Liberia from a country run by warlords and drug-addled child soldiers to a nation invested in literacy, markets, and the serious prosecution of rape.

Sirleaf's particular brand of awesomeness lies in her disinclination to give up in the face of brutality, even after being arrested, jailed, threatened, and exiled multiple times.

Mrs. Sirleaf, who has four sons, is also quite the smartypants.

There are some seriously not-nice people in the world. Some of those not-nice people aren’t too fond of the United States. In fact, some of them even refer to the land of the free and the home of the brave as the Great Satan.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one of those people. He claims that the United States has a dark record and has committed crimes against Iran. This is the same guy that rigged an election two years ago, sparking a riot that resulted in the death of civilians.

Irish Prime Minister Enda KennyWho's the angriest leader in the world this week? With so many to choose from, we should get our system of evaluation straight before we proceed. Each leader gets one point for making a strongly worded speech, two points for standing up to the opposition, five points for righteous indignation, and negative 12 points for staying in his hotel room instead of flying home to deal with the problem (even if he did have a decent excuse).

Let's start with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who is SO MAD at the Vatican right now. The whole thing started over the summer when, after years of patiently expecting the Catholic Church to punish the priests, bishops, and nuns who were found to have raped, tortured, or abused the children in their care, Mr. Kenny turned into a total bad-ass and called church leaders a bunch of lying jerks.

Jenny EriksonA global gathering of talking heads and delegates are currently convened in Cancun, Mexico to discuss global warming. Er, climate change. "Warming" is a bit of a misnomer with all the record cold going on.

I am a huge proponent of being good stewards of the Earth, and I think we should use our resources wisely. But some of the ideas being tossed around the Mother Earth fascists range from unsettling to downright disturbing.

One of the realistic goals covered at the conference so far has been setting up a $100 billion-a-year fund from developed countries to help developing nations implement greener technology.  I’m sure Cambodia’s evil dictator Hun Sen would never launder that money and use it for his own malicious purposes. 

The huge rash of secret documents put up on WikiLeaks this week could land site founder Julian Assange in jail for espionage, but that hasn't stopped the world from salivating over the juicy details.

It's not all warmongering and secretary of state meetings (yawn). Reading the site lets us play James Bond like we did in our bedrooms as kids. We're finally on the inside, and we're not going to come up for air anytime soon.

We've waded through the serious stuff for you (go ahead and thank us). Here are some of the most bizarre -- aka juiciest -- revelations to drop on Facebook. It will make you look in-the-know too:

Yesterday was Women's Equality Day. In spite of the passage of the 19th Amendment 90 years ago, women are still striving for equality in terms of our place in society here in the US. Half a world away, in Africa, the Global Fund is working just to keep women and babies alive, raising awareness via the Born HIV Free campaign, led by ambassador Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Talk about inequality: Women are biologically more susceptible to HIV, thanks to our anatomy and the levels of HIV present in semen. African women are frequent victims of non-consensual, unprotected sex -- or even consensual sex in exchange for money or gifts -- resulting in HIV infection.

Sex leads to pregnancy, and HIV-positive mothers pass the virus on to their newborns. According to the World Health Organization, "An estimated 430,000 children were newly infected with HIV in 2008, the vast majority of them through MTCT [mother-to-child transmission]."

What is the Global Fund doing to help African mothers and babies?