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.

If Only we Could Chalk it up to Anarchy in the UK (and not Human Nature) British court sentenced 16-year-old Andrew Smith to life in prison. The teenager and his 18-year-old friend, Jason Bolton, kicked Asaf Mahmood Ahmed so hard and so many times that the 28-year-old father of three had an asthma attack while lying in a pool of his own blood. Smith left the scene but came back to find Ahmed was reaching for his inhaler while still on the ground. Noticing the movement, Smith shoved the inhaler out of Ahmed’s hands. The boys’ unprovoked brutalization of Ahmed led to the man’s death and a complete lack of remorse on the part of Smith, who used his camera phone to film himself saying he had “the eyes of a killer.” Bolton will, as of now, be spending the next 17 years behind bars. Taking a look at Smith’s “inhuman” footage, the court promised him life in a cell.

Pirates Demand Steep Ransom The Somali pirates who hijacked “Saudi-owned supertanker” the Sirius Star have given Saudis 10 days to comply with their $25 million ransom demand. One of the pirates, Mohamed Said, has hinted that should the ship owners refuse to pay up, the captors “will take action that could be disastrous.”

Obama to Work for Peace in the Middle East The President-Elect called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to let the latter know once in office, he would commence work on smoothing through a two-state solution peace process that would, hopefully, mitigate some of the perennial tension found in the region…

Hezbollah’s Burgeoning Army The “militant Shiite movement” has a new set of young and enthusiastic, if stern-faced, recruits: the Mahdi Scouts. The 17- and 18-year-olds dress in boy scoutesque attire and train on Lebanese fields, as they answer to a podium-using leader and the yellow Hezbollah flag while keeping Ayatollah Khomeini’s picture close to their hearts, literally. Many of them will enter the “party’s bureaucracy,” and others will take to the hills like their older cohorts, the guerilla army, all in order to fight Israel from the south of Lebanon. Meaning the “party of God” in Arabic, popular “military, political and social force” and Hamas-inspiration Hezbollah is intent on attracting as many as possible to its Israel-attacking cause.

Suicide Bombs Just Won’t Stop Afghanistan took another grieving day today after a Taliban suicide bomber packed a tanker truck chock full of explosives and detonated it in Kandahar’s temporary council office. Felt throughout the city, the bomb killed six people, wounded 40 and caused five houses to cave in on themselves. Few newspapers or Web sites ever analyze what bomb-wounded really means: these folks may not be dead, but they’re badly burnt, some of them maimed or blinded, nursing gashes and lost limbs. Even one dead or one wounded is still too many.

Another Bomb and…Attending School is a…Sin? And in the same article as above, we learn that in another part of Afghanistan, the Nangarhar Province, not only did a Taliban suicide bomber slam into an American military convoy, killing what media outlets have estimated at between 56 and 74 people, but also that two as-yet-unidentified motorcyclists sprayed eight adolescent girls on their way to school with battery acid. Why? Because they were women attempting to receive an education.

When Will the Congo Heal If it’s not Belgian oppression, it’s widespread rape. If it’s not rape, it’s coerced fighting. Young men in eastern Congo have run from their homes, choosing displacement over membership to rebel forces. These men have explained the rebels beat their home doors down, seeking new ranks, stopping at nothing to gain new hands to help their cause.

Europe Wants no More from Russia (With Love or Not) Tired of facing the fact that more than 60 percent of its energy comes from imports (two fifths of that Russian in source), the EU is planning a supergrid of internal power supplies (e.g. increasing dependence on North Sea area wind farms) that would rely less on Russian monopoly.

Another Casualty in the Afghan War...a soldier’s hearing. One of the 10 British soldiers in each regiment has come back from the Afghan front with permanent audial damage. The problem has, until now, been under reported. These injuries, likened to those caused by the “thunder” of the Korean War, have rendered most of these men unable to return to service.

Mis-catalogued and Murdered for It Colombia’s government has been found responsible for killing dozens of its nation’s down and out, mis-labeling them as “insurgents” and “duly” punishing them for it. Human Rights groups are appropriately outraged, but can their anger be enough of a catalyst for the necessary change?

Somalia Struck by Suicide Bombers At least twenty people died at UN and Somali government stations throughout the country as a result of the five suicide bombs detonated by what the Somali government termed the work of “Islamist terrorists.”

More From This Day in History…OCT. 30: 1885 celebrates poet Ezra Pound’s birth, 1918 sees an Armistice reached in the Middle Eastern front of WWI, 1920 founds the Communist Party in Sydney, Australia, 1922 finds the solidification of fascism in Italy in the guise of Mussolini’s rise to power, 1944 brings Anne and Margot Frank from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, 1954 gives photographer Mario Testino to the world, 1983 grants Argentina its first democratic elections in seven years, 1988 has Philip Morris buying Kraft Foods for $13.1 billion,1991 creates The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions with the post-Soviet states directly in mind and 2005 presents a Dresden rebuilt.

Not All Quiet on the Afghani Front…There really is nothing amicable about “friendly fire”; it’s simply a fatal error. And today marked another nine of them. An American air attack on an Afghan army post resulted in nine deaths and three critical injuries.

Throwing Rice at their Wedding The Bush Administration sent Secretary of State Condoleezza to Puerto Vallarta in order to meet with Mexican counterpart, Patricia Espinosa. Mexico’s drug cartel violence has reached a fever pitch loud enough to make adjacent U.S. feel threatened and of the mind a diplomatic intervention is required.

Rock and Hard Place Sandwiched between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, Azerbaijan has ever been in an uncomfortable geographic and political position. Since the Soviet Union fell, the oil bearing country has been able to keep Russia at bay while courting the interests of NATO and the U.S. Following the former’s war with Georgia, however, striking that balance has proven quite the challenge.

Shiites Restive in Sadr City Despite the relative calm washing over the city since its cease-fire, Shiites within its confines have grown increasingly angry regarding a government they consider “worse than Saddam Hussein['s].” For now, their fury has been kept in check, but how long before their pots boil over?

Vietnam Incarcerating Journalist: Nguyen Viet Chien, a Vietnamese journalist who exposed his government’s corrupt “siphoning of aid money” to finance soccer match bets was sentenced to two years in prison for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interest of the state.” Chien, however, stood by his reporting, saying:

“With my journalist conscience, I can say I never have any other purpose in mind when writing my reports but exposing wrongdoing and fighting corruption.”

Internet Phone Calls May be Undermining Investigations on Terrorism: As programs like Skype become more popular, police are having a harder time keeping track of where each call is coming from and to whom it’s being made, a check they engage in in order to fish out terrorism or the threat of it. They’re finding this medium more difficult to monitor as it does not, unlike mobile phone companies which maintain such records for billing purposes, keep lists of who has made which calls when and from where.

Stocks Falling in Asian Pacific Markets: Shortly after Wall Street lost eight percent of its value, stocks plummeted in the Asian Pacific Markets. Indexes from the following areas: India, Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan have all shown the burn.

No Separation Between Bulgarian Mob and State: Bulgaria’s mob is back in the political arena, operating by a typical “no holds barred” credo (e.g. burning opponents’ houses) to stay in power and manipulate those others who won’t move aside.