Aerial view of Greenland&${esc.hash}39;s west coast in September 2004. File photo by REUTERS/Andy Clark
Test your conflict knowledge, and a cheap cure for black fever... So you think you know about obscure territorial disputes?The U.S.-based analytical website foreignpolicy.com has a clever way of pulling in the readers by appealing to their competitive natures. It teases you with a headline about the five stories no one knows about, and your ego makes you click on it because you can&${esc.hash}39;t help hoping that actually you are already perfectly well informed about whatever&${esc.hash}39;s on their list.
This week it&${esc.hash}39;s the turn of the world&${esc.hash}39;s forgotten territorial disputes to get the treatment. One of them is Eritrea and Ethiopia&${esc.hash}39;s simmering conflict over their entire 620-mile (1000-km) border.
Foreignpolicy.com points out that Eritrea walked out of talks in June, raising fears of re-igniting a war which killed 70,000 people last time it was in full swing. For more on tensions between the two Horn of Africa neighbours have a look at AlertNet&${esc.hash}39;s crisis briefing.
We know India and Pakistan have their differences about Kashmir, but foreignpolicy.com focuses on India&${esc.hash}39;s claim for a Chinese-controlled section of Kashmir the size of Switzerland. Why does it matter? "Because it&${esc.hash}39;s India and China (and any) spat between the two nations matters."
The two countries have 38 percent of the world&${esc.hash}39;s population, and they&${esc.hash}39;re both nuclear powers, so bad relations between them is bad for everyone, goes the argument.
The other conflicts on the list are a little more obscure - Bolivia and Chile are trying to work through their dispute over the small chunk of territory that separates Bolivia from the Pacific Ocean. With Chile&${esc.hash}39;s new president, Michelle Bachelet, there&${esc.hash}39;s a chance of restoring diplomatic relations after 30 years of frostiness.
The Spratly Islands, a cluster of tiny reefs and atolls in the South China Sea, are claimed by China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, who somehow maintain a military presence on the islands, which have a land area of less than 5 square miles (13 square km). Brunei also says the islands belong to it. They&${esc.hash}39;re in one of the most heavily fished areas in the world, foreignpolicy.com says, and they could lie on top of the fourth-largest oil reserve on the planet.
Canada and Denmark aren&${esc.hash}39;t usually associated with war, but foreignpolicy.com says their dispute over a tiny, icy rock near the Arctic Ocean between Canada and Greenland could heat up when global warming opens new northern sea routes for navigation. Hans Island is too bleak even for Inuit peoples to inhabit, but it is coveted as a crucial stopping point when shipping routes and navies want to cross parts of the Arctic which have been impassable for centuries.
Curing black feverThe drug to cure kala azar - which sometimes goes by the name of black fever, and kills about half a million people every year - was identified in the 1960s. But paromomycin never made it onto the market because it wasn&${esc.hash}39;t deemed sufficiently profitable.
Now, though, a small California-based charity says it has done the medical trials and found paromomycin injections to be safe and effective. Crucially, San Francisco&${esc.hash}39;s Institute for OneWorld Health also says they are cheap - just ${esc.dollar}10 for a course of injections - which means treatment could be widespread enough to virtually eliminate the disease.
Kala azar is the second-largest parasitic killer after malaria, and is spread by tiny sand flies who can pass through most netting. It is mostly found in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sudan and Brazil.
The Institute has battled against the U.N. World Health Organisation for access to information about 1960s research on paromomycin, according to the New York Times.
And it&${esc.hash}39;s also had to fight to prove to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service the Institute is a non-profit organisation.
Victoria Hale, who founded the Institute for OneWorld Health with her husband, was quoted in the New York Times saying: "The last disease we truly eradicated was smallpox... There&${esc.hash}39;s no urgency to eradicating diseases anymore. Why not?"
The Indian government is expected to approve the drug in the next few months. If it does, this could be the first time a charity has succeeded in ushering a drug to market.
Ruth Gidley AlertNet journalist
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