Hello to you and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
We're coming to you live from London.
I'm Sean Lay.
It's good to have your company this hour.
Later,
we're going to be talking about new research which may give hope to those who suffer from anosmia.
That's not having a sense of smell.
We'll be hearing from one sufferer whose condition could prove fatal.
I suffered a head injury when I was 22 and I lost my sense of smell as a result of that.
At the time, in the context of what could have happened, it didn't seem like the biggest deal,
but it had an impact on my life in all sorts of ways.
I came close to blowing myself up when I nearly lit a cigarette in a kitchen that was full of gas that I couldn't smell.
And, you know, to this day,
I'm unable to detect odours and I am not connected to the world around me in the way that so many of us are.
We'll have more on that story a little later in the programme.
But first on news now.
In recent months,
there have been hopes that the long-running insurgency in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo could be drawing to a close.
The government has long accused its neighbour Rwanda of training and financing the M23,
a rebel group notorious for its use of extreme violence.