NEED TO KNOW The Saddest Microcosm For the past five months, the Yemeni capital of Sana'a has been mostly quiet. Quiet for Sana'a, that is. Fighter jets laden with bombs weren't flying over the dwellings resembling gingerbread houses. Shots ringing out weren't the norm at night for a...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Venezuela’s Oil Troubles Oil prices may finally be set to rise. But desperate Venezuela won’t gain much from the potential lifeline, despite holding the world’s largest crude reserves. Shortly after Venezuela opened its border with Colombia for the first time in over a year last...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Israel’s African Handshake Egypt’s Islam El Shehaby was escorted from the mat by loud boos in Rio de Janeiro last week, after the judo player refused to bow or shake hands with Israel’s Or Sasson – who had defeated him handily. But in the political...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Terror Bogey Russian President Vladimir Putin’s negotiating style bears some similarity to the old American cliché “Shoot first and ask questions later.” That’s why observers are cocking their eyebrows at Moscow’s claims to have foiled a series of Ukrainian attacks in Crimea last week. On one...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Desert Quicksand Since the ouster and later killing of former dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011, Libya has been reeling in chaos. A “shattered, hollowed-out country” due to the dictator’s long history of mismanagement and a lack of international follow-up after his ouster, Libya had fractured...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Thai-style Democracy Thailand looks to be destined for more political violence. After some two years of authoritarian-style order, a string of bombings across the Southeast Asian country left four people dead and more than 20 people injured last week. But as the police look for the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Bashir’s Bargain Once upon a time, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was an international pariah – accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for the killing of 300,000 people and the displacement of 2.5 million more in Darfur. Despite an arrest warrant issued against him by...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Poking the Dragon U.S. President Barack Obama’s efforts to prevent conflict in the Far East seem to be ramping up tensions and encouraging greater belligerence from Beijing. Washington calls it defending its allies, or simply being prepared. But the initial results suggest it’s just...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Going Missing Malaysia has become notorious for losing things. First, it was Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing 777 that disappeared with 239 people on board while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur in March 2014. Then it was a billion U.S. dollars – or...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Going Missing Malaysia has become notorious for losing things. First, it was Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing 777 that disappeared with 239 people on board while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur in March 2014. Then it was a billion U.S. dollars – or...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Russian Roulette Negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin must feel a bit like Russian roulette. You know there’s a bullet in the chamber somewhere; you’re just not sure when it will go off. With his 2014 invasion of Ukraine and his 2015 bombing campaign in...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Winter is Coming To paraphrase Game of Thrones, winter may be coming for the country that sparked the Arab Spring. At first glance, the ouster of Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid at the end of July seemed like a routine bit of parliamentary politics. But...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Two Steps Back India’s most popular prime minister in decades just pushed through the country’s biggest economic reform since its 1991 liberalization – at least in theory. But as always seems to happen in India, the big step forward came with two steps back. The...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Desperate Times Desperate times call for desperate measures, the saying goes. In Venezuela, those measures provide as good a yardstick as any for how desperate the situation has become. Not only has beleaguered President Nicolas Maduro appointed a general indicted by the U.S. for drug trafficking...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Losing Faith For the past 22 years, South Africa has been running on faith. Steeped in the lore of Nelson Mandela’s long struggle and eventual victory against apartheid, the 104-year-old African National Congress (ANC) has done better than win elections. The storied political party has...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Spectacle of Catastrophe? Rattled by impeachment and corruption scandals, a vicious recession and a public health emergency thanks to the Zika virus, Brazil would have had a memorable 2016 regardless of what’s coming next. Yet those crises will take a back seat to the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Being Different When Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others began flooding into Europe last year, some warned that terrorists might be among them. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel opted for an open-door policy for the beleaguered refugees – whose plight echoed that of the East Germans...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Pushing Poland For once, the pope is more liberal than the people. Pope Francis confronted conservative Poland head-on this week, pushing the country’s staunch Catholics to rethink their condemnation of homosexuality and rejection of refugees. But it’s unclear whether policymakers in Warsaw will heed his...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Russian Dolls Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sent geopolitical ripples hither and thither on Wednesday when he called on Moscow to locate the 30,000 emails his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton deleted before investigators began looking into how she routed State Department messages through a...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Taking Stock Two years after the short yet brutal war between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, there are few signs of recovery in Gaza. Known in Israel as "Operation Protective Edge," the seven-week conflict in July and August 2014 killed more than 2,100 Palestinians,...
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