From Our Own Correspondent - 08/07/2010

From Our Own Correspondent's in the small Alabama town of Magnolia Springs this morning -- hearing how its battle against the oil spill has embraced the American values of self-reliance and ingenuity. Also: Srebrenica struggles to escape the memories of its massacre. In the Arctic's icy white wilderness, we find extraordinary rich, green plantlife. And a stroll across the French battlefield where sixty thousand Britons died -- on just one day. For years....as Yugoslavia collapsed....the Balkans witnessed terrible violence. Civilians were often targeted without mercy. City streets were shelled. And whole communities were driven from their homes.... But in all the killing and brutality, there was one particularly appalling episode: the massacre at Srebrenica. It happened fifteen years ago now. And in Srebrenica, Mark Lowen has been wondering if the town can ever shed its past.... Still the oil gushes from the wreckage on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. With every passing hour the slick grows. And all along America's Gulf coast, small towns must try to confront it. Among them is a little place in Alabama called Magnolia Springs. It didn't wait for help to arrive. Instead Laura Trevelyan says the community drew on deep-rooted, old-fashioned American values, and set about defending its way of life. These past few weeks have been very much South Africa's time in the sun. The World Cup was a chance for the country to show itself off at its best....and South Africa has scored! The tournament's been a success. But its final whistle will sound this weekend. And Andrew Harding has been reflecting on whether the great event will have made any lasting difference, once the crowds....and the world's attention....have drifted away. If you want evidence of climate change, go to the Arctic. The ice is shrinking. It's reckoned that this summer it'll retreat further than ever recorded. We don't know exactly what impact this may have on the earth's climate as a whole. But the continuing loss of the summer ice is lending added urgency to the study of its unique biology. Richard Hollingham has been with scientists examining the extraordinary life-forms that manage to thrive in the harshness of the far north.... It was in these summer days in July....more than ninety-years ago, during the First World War.....that the Battle of the Somme was fought. By the end of just the first day, the British alone had suffered sixty-thousand casualties.... Perhaps as much as any battle in history, this one has come to symbolise the horror and futility of war... And all these years on....Fergal Keane has been walking in the footsteps of the lost legions of the Somme.....