NEED TO KNOW INDIA Whose Fault Indian authorities recently arrested five activists on charges of inciting “caste-based” violence. The activists, who included a poet, civil-rights campaigners and a law professor who is also a trade union organizer, were accused of spurring a public rally of Dalits, once known as...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SWEDEN Winter is Coming Sweden, the superpower of Scandinavia, with its wealth, high standard of living and generous welfare state, is normally immune to the destabilizing political trends sweeping the rest of Europe. Its parliamentary elections on Sept. 9, however, may upset that status quo, thanks...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW JORDAN Home, and Away Large refugee camps in regions like the Middle East and Africa become like cities, with stores, eateries and other amenities. In Zaatari, the largest camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan – 80,000 refugees live in the camp founded in 2012. Here, “Paradise...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NIGERIA Ready to Blow During British Prime Minister Theresa May's visit to the Nigerian capital of Abuja last month, her counterpart, President Muhammadu Buhari, vowed to conduct "free, fair and credible elections" in February, when Africa's most populous nation will elect a new president. But with...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CENTRAL AMERICA No Right to Grow Old Migrants have many reasons for making the long trek to the United States from Central American countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Poverty, crime and corruption, for example, are endemic in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula....
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW RWANDA The Price of Progress Campaign season is in full swing in Rwanda as the nation's more than 7 million registered voters prepare to elect a new parliament in the first week of September. This being the fourth parliamentary election since the end of Rwanda's brutal...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ARGENTINA Kirchner's Revenge A recent police raid on former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s properties is a reminder that criminal investigations have become weapons in the battle for the hearts and souls of nations throughout South America. As the BBC explained, the raid stemmed from...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MOROCCO A Will, A Way Cross the southwestern border of Morocco – it's a dotted line on most maps – and it's thousands of miles of open desert: A few towns and few people and an occasional camel and windmill break the endless expanse of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SPAIN Over the Fence Spain has a wall, or at least a fence. And still they come. Recently, around 300 African migrants stormed the fence separating Ceuta, a Spanish exclave on Africa’s northern coast, from Morocco, El País reported. More than 100 of the migrants made it...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AUSTRALIA Staying Tuned Australian broadcasting giant Nine Entertainment recently reported rosy earnings that included a 27 percent jump in annual profits. The news in the Sydney Morning Herald was another step on what appears to be a yellow brick road for the company. Last month, Nine...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CAMEROON A War In Any Language… Doctors, nurses and other staff are deserting their posts in Cameroon’s northern English-speaking regions as they come under attack from both sides in a bloody conflict between government troops and armed separatists. The military is attacking the health-care providers for...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW COLUMBIA No Time For Snoozing Newly elected Colombian President Ivan Duque, sworn in earlier this month, is unlikely to catch a break as a freshman president, wrote Mac Margolis in Bloomberg Opinion. There's just too much going on in this pivotal South American nation to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AZERBAIJAN Smoke and Mirrors An appeals court’s recent release of opposition politician Ilgar Mammadov from prison in Azerbaijan is a sign of the mixed progress toward openness and freedom in the former Soviet republic. Police arrested Mammadov in 2013 for allegedly organizing riots, Radio Free Europe...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MALAYSIA New Faces, Old Faces Everyone was shocked when a coalition of political parties called the Pakatan Harapan swept to victory in Malaysia’s elections in May, including Pakatan Harapan candidates. Their win threw out the ruling United Malays National Organization after 61 years in power since...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW WORLD The Politics of Pipelines From the Persian Gulf's Strait of Hormuz to Canada's Athabasca Oil Sands, control over access to and transport of oil and natural gas serves as a flashpoint for showing the true colors of political and economic relationships around the world. "Pipelines...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW BANGLADESH Road Rage The protests that erupted recently in Bangladesh started over unsafe roads. Now they have shut down sections of the capital, Dhaka, and ballooned into calls for action on a host of issues, including poor governance, nepotism, corruption, and freedom of the press, the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHILE Lemons to Lemonade Americans rarely think of South America as a destination for immigrants and refugees. But Chile is now experiencing an influx of newcomers that’s one of the largest immigration surges in the nation’s history. Annual immigration to Chile, the continent’s wealthiest country per capita,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW YEMEN Peace and Prejudice This month, the United Nations' special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, convinced both sides fighting in Yemen to come to Geneva for talks on ending the nation’s brutal civil war. With the war between the Saudi-led coalition backing the Yemeni government and...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ROMANIA Protest Fatigue In late 2017 and into the new year, tens of thousands of Romanians marched on Bucharest in the nation's largest demonstrations since the fall of communism: They were protesting efforts in Parliament to water down anti-corruption laws in a state ranked as...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GLOBAL TRADE Trading in Emotions Analysts wonder whether new US economic sanctions will topple or reinforce the Iranian government, Foreign Policy wrote. Leaders in Moscow are preparing a “crushing response” to proposed US sanctions against Russia to punish their alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election,...
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