Doctors who risk their lives to save other people’s, scientists working on growing blood in a lab and researchers aiming to erase traumatic war memories – it’s all in this week’s Health show.
It's one of the world's forgotten wars, yet one of the most violent currently underway. Just a couple of hundred kilometres away from a tourist's tropical paradise, fighting between Buddhists and Muslims in the south of Thailand has been raging. The area was annexed by Bangkok over a hundred years ago, but violence has increased since the turn of this century.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (pictured) declared a state of emergency in areas bordering South Sudan following the arrests of three foreigners on Sunday, fuelling concerns the two countries are on the brink of all-out war.
Sudan said it had arrested three foreigners on Saturday for illegally entering the disputed Heglig border area accompanied by a South Sudanese soldier. The British, Norwegian and South African nationals were accused of trying to help South Sudan.
South Sudan President Salva Kiir (pictured) told China on Tuesday that the country’s northern rival, Sudan, had declared war by bombing a market and oil field on Monday.
Mali's coup leaders and politicians said Monday that they would hold talks with the Islamist rebel groups Ansar Dine and the Tuaregs who now control northern Mali. The Islamists said Sunday that they would be willing to enter talks with Bamako.
Malian politicians and former junta members met Saturday with mediator Blaise Compaore, the president of Burkina Faso, to finalise an accord for Mali's return to civilian rule and take steps toward ending a Tuareg separatist rebellion.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (pictured) has cut short a trip to China because of Syrian border fire, which Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan described as “a clear violation” on Monday. Davutoglu was supposed to return later in the week.
Sarajevo marked on Friday the 20th anniversary of the Bosnian War, a conflict that saw two million displaced and 100,000 killed. The nation still struggles with the legacy of the brutal conflict, with ongoing simmering ethnic tensions.
Douglas Herbert speaks to award-winning war correspondent Janine Di Giovanni. She spent much of the 1990s covering the Balkan wars - as well as other calamities in Rwanda, Liberia, Congo, and Chechnya. In a 2004 chronicle about her Balkan experiences entitled "Madness Visible", she recounted the human cost of the war in vivid terms - from the genocide of Srebrenica to the gang-raping of Muslims in Kosovo.
