The voice on the radio is calm, its message anything but. “Civil war is going to happen,” says the announcer on a station broadcast across the arid plateau around Khon Kaen, where rice paddies, cane fields and fishing-net factories form the geographic heart of the country’s red-shirt movement. It is now preparing to fight back if the government it supports, under caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, falls. “All sides, get ready,” the voice says. “We are ready to come together any time in the name of democracy.”

The South Sudanese government and representatives of rebel forces met for the formal opening of peace talks Saturday evening in Ethiopia, part of the diplomatic effort to halt weeks of fighting in the young nation. The two delegations met separately with mediators at a hotel in Addis Ababa to pin down the points they would negotiate. Both sides then gathered with Ethiopia’s foreign minister for a ceremony to mark the official start of the talks, with more substantive bargaining expected Sunday.

Aid agencies have warned of a looming humanitarian catastrophe in South Sudan, where fighting continues in spite of the crisis talks currently under way in neighbouring Ethiopia. On Thursday, as the government accused rebel forces of forcibly recruiting civilians for their attempt to march on the capital, humanitarian agencies warned that tens of thousands of refugees were without food, water or shelter.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said Tuesday it has "mounting evidence" that serious human rights abuses, including targeted ethnic killings, have been committed in the world's newest nation in the 16 days since violence broke out in Juba. The alleged atrocities include extra-judicial killings of civilians and captured soldiers, massive displacements and arbitrary detentions, often on ethnic grounds, UNMISS said in a statement.

The Vatican announced Tuesday it would host a workshop early in the new year to brainstorm peaceful solutions to the ongoing civil war in Syria.The Vatican has invited leading figures including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to brainstorming sessions on Jan. 13.

South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar and the nation's president Salva Kiir have agreed to negotiate after two weeks of bitter fighting that has brought the world's newest nation to the brink of an extended civil war. Yet fighting is apparently continuing as government forces under Mr. Kiir were engaged at least up to a deadline designed to trigger military intervention by neighboring African states, backed by the international community.

South Sudan's army has clashed with the "White Army" ethnic militia, a spokesman has said, accusing rebels of mobilising the force despite the offer of a truce to end the conflict in the country. The White Army - made up largely of Nuer youths who dust their bodies with ash to protect themselves against insects - clashed with government troops near the town of Bor five days after rebels were driven out, army spokesman Philip Aguer said on Sunday.

Elodiane Baalbe hid underneath her bed as gunfire echoed around her on Christmas Day in the capital of Central African Republic. When it finally died down on Thursday, she made a dash for safety, hiding behind houses as she fled her neighbourhood. On her way out she passed the calcified car of a unit of Chadian peacekeepers, the charred body of one soldier still upright in the vehicle inside. The sight was so horrifying that she looked away immediately. “I had my 3-year-old on my back. I looked for a second, and then I kept running,” she said.