A year after Lula came to power, his gamble has paid off: deforestation has been halved in the Amazon. But this success comes at the cost of sacrificing another ecosystem that's just as vital to Brazil: the Cerrado.

After a year of war, Sudan is dealing with one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. As more local and international actors get involved, the outlook remains grim.

Some top Nigerian banks are eyeing the international and local capital markets to raise fresh capital in a bid to meet the recapitalisation exercise by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Egie Akpata, Chairman of Skymark Partners joins CNBC Africa to examine options available to banks.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a 10% rise in the dollar on the currency market would push down real gross domestic product (GDP) in emerging economies by 1.9% after one year, with adverse economic effects lasting more than two years

The Iranian attack was largely repelled and as such is a "dramatic failure", Barak said. As a result, he believes "there is no need and no will to go into full-scale war" with Iran.

The Croatian city of Vukovar, on the banks of the Danube, has a painful past. Located on the border with Serbia, it was the scene of the first major battle in the 1990s Balkan wars. Four years before the genocide in Srebrenica and eight years before the war in Kosovo, Vukovar was the first city in the former Yugoslavia to suffer ethnic cleansing, in 1991. More than 30 years later, reconciliation between local Serbs and Croats is hindered by impunity for war crimes and the inability to agree on a common version of events.