Need to Know The Same Old Same Old Tens of thousands of people congregated on the Promenade des Anglais Monday to observe a moment of silence in honor of the 84 people killed when an angry young man drove a 19-ton truck through a crowd watching Bastille...
Read full story →Need to Know Shock but Little Awe The failed coup d’etat in Turkey was shocking. But, as the dust from the brief chaos settles, it’s not hard to see that the putsch wasn’t a total surprise given the country’s trajectory in recent months. In the run-up to the...
Read full story →Need to Know An Eye for an Eye “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” is one of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s most famous aphorisms. But events in Kashmir this week suggest that the army and police have read the words of the Mahatma like...
Read full story →Need to Know Pottery Barn Rule Redux As the United States plans to deploy 560 more American soldiers to help the Iraqi government retake Mosul from the Islamic State, some Iraqis are preparing for a humanitarian crisis. As many as one million people, or half the city’s residents,...
Read full story →Need to Know A Running Start Theresa May is Britain’s new Iron Lady. And it wasn’t long after Conservative Party members anointed May as their new leader this week that Iron Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany gave the incoming prime minister her marching orders. "The task of the new...
Read full story →Need to Know Troubled Waters When Wang Zhenzhong looks to the ocean, he sees China. "For thousands of years, fishermen have fished our ancestral sea, the South China Sea,” the 35-year-old resident of Tanmen, a port town in China’s southernmost province of Hainan Island told NPR. Filipino leaders don’t...
Read full story →Need to Know Asia’s Brexit moment Japan is on track to deliver another momentous political change to today’s tumultuous geopolitics. On Sunday, Japanese voters gave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his allies a two-thirds vote in the country’s upper house. With his similar supermajority in the lower house,...
Read full story →July 8, 2016 NEED TO KNOW Blue Lives Matter The killings just won’t stop. Reeling from a series of mass shootings, the US is again confronting gun violence, racism and the sticky problem of gun rights. Snipers...
Read full story →July 7, 2016 NEED TO KNOW Tensions, New and Old Leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are meeting in Warsaw Friday for a two-day summit that’s illustrating the challenges facing – as well as...
Read full story →July 6, 2016 NEED TO KNOW Hair shirts for spies Medieval penitents used to suffer in itchy hair shirts as a way to atone for their sins. The world’s intelligence agencies could use some discomfort of their...
Read full story →July 5, 2016 NEED TO KNOW North Korea: How Bad Is It? North Korea appears to have achieved a worrying capability following its recent successful launch of a Musudan medium-range missile after numerous flops. Pyongyang's Musudan traveled...
Read full story →July 4, 2016 EDITOR'S NOTE Today is Independence Day in America, the 240th anniversary of its birth as a new nation. July 4th is a day of celebration and remembrance and in its honor we...
Read full story →July 1, 2016 NEED TO KNOW No BoJo Means No With former London Mayor Boris Johnson, aka BoJo, out of the race for prime minister, the odds that the UK will step away from the ledge...
Read full story →June 30, 2016 NEED TO KNOW The Duterte Show Goes Live Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated Thursday as president of the Philippines following a landslide May 9 election victory and a campaign that featured misogyny, tough talk...
Read full story →June 29, 2016 NEED TO KNOW Taking a Step Back? When the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, it was heralded as a milestone on the road toward a new era of globalization....
Read full story →June 28, 2016 NEED TO KNOW Lessons From Victory It took a month but Iraqi forces with the aid of the United States and Iran finally liberated Fallujah from the Islamic State. A mere 40 miles west...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Duterte’s Balancing Act The United States could be out of an ally when Rodrigo Duterte takes over as president of the Philippines next month. While his predecessor, Benigno Aquino, took a strong stance against Chinese aggression in the region and cozied up to the United...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW After Rousseff, More Turmoil for Brazil? Brazil’s first woman president abandoned the presidential palace Thursday morning. But the impeachment vote that sent her packing is unlikely to mean more than a temporary lull to the turmoil in Latin America’s largest economy. Here’s what the suspension...
Read full story →May 12, 2016 NEED TO KNOW Iraq: Who's in Control? In Iraq, there are many people with many grievances: Protestors in the protected Green Zone are demonstrating against a lack of services, poor governance and corruption,...
Read full story →May 12, 2016 NEED TO KNOW Iraq: Who's in Control? In Iraq, there are many people with many grievances: Protestors in the protected Green Zone are demonstrating against a lack of services, poor governance and corruption,...
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