If diamonds are forever, so is the pain they cause. Though this strain of diamond fever—with its corresponding blood diamonds—doesn’t call Sierra Leone and Guinea home, it does bear a strong resemblance to the one(s) found there a decade ago. This time, however, it’s hit Zimbabwe, as Mugabe’s sickening government looks to one of the country’s natural riches to spice things up economically.
But diamond fever’s not the only illness plaguing Zimbabwe’s borders. The country’s hoping to gather international aid in its fight against a cholera epidemic, which has been declared a national emergency. When will someone cut this oppressed, violent, inflation-stricken, refugee spawning, utterly ravaged country a break?
And on another side of Africa lies Rwanda, stirring up trouble for its neighbor, the Congo. The beleaguered former Belgian territory is preparing for an internal rebellion, and neighboring Rwanda, harboring a series of “strategic interests” is content to fuel the fire by sending over hundreds “if not,” as The New York Times put it, “thousands of troops to rebel front lines.”
A blood-spattered Mumbai has led many—powerful and otherwise—to ask whether Pakistan is doing what it can (or, worse, what it shouldn’t) to battle militancy. The most recent carnage has raised questions of how effective the country’s current government is when fighting that extremist-spawned violence.
More than a half a year since the disastrous Sichuan earthquake struck China, couples victim to a one-child policy are trying to rebuild. While still in mourning, many middle-aged couples are seeking government-funded medical help—such as reversing vasectomies—to start again by having another child now that so many of the country’s single children were lost during calamity.
