NEED TO KNOW Muddling Along Given the chaos engulfing the Arab world, Morocco is remarkably stable. But now the North African kingdom is struggling to overcome political turbulence. The Islamist but moderate Justice and Development Party (PJD) won elections in October but has yet to form a government – a...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW What's Normal? Russia wants to normalize relations with the United States and Europe. But what’s normal? "We need to work in a businesslike way," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told his country's lawmakers on Wednesday. Among other issues, Lavrov's proposed normalization referred to the US and European...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Don't Walk Away Some believe climate change is a Chinese-invented "hoax." But the country where citizens sometimes can’t see past the smog in their sprawling cities is working hard to combat Beijing’s supposed fictional creation. Indeed, as climate change skeptics continue to deny that carbon emissions...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Mother of Necessity Ethiopians are anxiously watching the price of qat. The mild, green-leaf stimulant is now the second-largest cash crop in Ethiopia after coffee, the Economist recently reported. Folks throughout the Horn of Africa chew it regularly. But Ethiopians fear what might happen to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Talking or Not The new peace talks to end the Syrian Civil War that began on Monday in the capital of Kazakhstan highlight big shifts in geopolitics. Most importantly, the United States isn't involved. Moscow, Ankara and Tehran are sponsoring the negotiations. The US, on...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Get Ready Today’s inauguration of President Donald Trump is shaping up as the start to a peculiar era in world affairs. The United States is potentially going to be the cause of, rather than the solution to, global instability in the next few years...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Gambian Standoff The political crisis in The Gambia has been heralded as a face-off between the forces currently at odds throughout the continent. On one side stand the forces of democracy – civil and human rights activists, opposition leaders and others who want the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Bumps and Curves Brazilian politics was a rollercoaster ride for much of last year, culminating in the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff’s successor, Michel Temer, is now determined to address Brazil's big challenge in 2017: its crumbling economy. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Last Domino After a tumultuous year that saw voters lash out at Western elites, many believe German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the last remaining defender of transatlantic liberal values. On Monday, for example, Merkel lived up to her reputation as the Iron Chancellor in...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Global Imbalance Thoughtful folks should keep in mind a stunning statistic as the world prepares for what is promising to be a year of political controversies and backbiting. On Sunday, the British charity Oxfam released a report claiming that eight men own the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW From the Frying Pan As Cuba draws closer to the United States – President Barack Obama on Thursday ended visa-free travel for Cubans fleeing to the US, a long-sought goal of Havana – the other once-great socialist hope of the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela, is...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Name of the Game President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines came up during Secretary of State Designate Rex Tillerson’s grilling on Capitol Hill Wednesday. When Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio asked Tillerson whether Duterte has committed human rights abuses, the ex-chief executive of Exxon...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Countdown With the Islamic State (IS) effectively driven out of their North-African stronghold in Libya, the Mosul operation well underway and the group incurring tens of thousands of casualties, it looks like the so-called caliphate's days are numbered. But 2017 will present challenges in...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Facing Up Kosovo’s leaders are calling on a French court to release Ramush Haradinaj, an ex-prime minister and former guerrilla fighter who allegedly kidnapped, tortured and killed Serbian civilians during the tiny Balkan country’s war of independence against Serbia in the late 1990s. His nickname was...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Reaping and Sowing Britain is preparing to reap the harvest of seeds sowed in 2016. On Sunday, the potentially dire consequences of Brexit became clearer as Prime Minister Theresa May discussed her plan to officially begin Britain’s departure from the European Union. Referring to the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Fighting For Scraps Zimbabwe appears headed for its second major public health crisis in eight years. On Thursday, Voice of America said that 126 cases of typhoid had been confirmed in Harare, the capital, and more than 1,000 were suspected nationwide. Government public health officials...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Win-wins and Losses Amid the American presidential election, Brexit, the Syrian Civil War, terrorism in Europe and other big news this year, many folks have been too busy to focus on a slow-moving but major development that would be garnering headlines in the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Sideshows and Backfires When Arab ambassadors recently asked about America’s plans for the Middle East, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy advisors said ending the bloody Syrian civil war would be the White House’s top priority this year. The first step to reaching that...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Tourism and Tyranny The communist-style military parade that Reuters covered in Havana on Monday was a fitting symbol of the anachronism of Cuba. It was a heady show, but it wasn’t clear what lessons an observer might take from it. Even as the United...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Excelsior The New Year’s Day attack in Istanbul occurred at the end of a bloody year in Turkey. The Associated Press on Sunday provided a long list of bombings, shootings and other attacks that occurred in the past year there – a tragic but...
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