NEED TO KNOW BRAZIL The Wages of Disillusionment The Brazilian Supreme Court’s hearing on the South American country’s abortion laws kicked off intense controversy. Few expected the court to overturn Brazil’s tight restrictions against the procedure. But abortion-rights activists hoped the hearings would ignite further discussions and set the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHINA October Surprise Japan’s stock market regained its spot as the second-largest in the world recently as investors fled China due to concerns about the burgeoning trade war between the US and the world’s most populous country. Chinese stocks were worth $6.09 trillion late last week,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW BELARUS Reading the Tea Leaves During the Cold War, Kremlinologists grew a cottage industry out of analyzing the Soviet Union, where leaders operated without the hindrance of public scrutiny. In Belarus – the so-called “last dictatorship of Europe – one still needs to read the proverbial...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRAN Bold Steps and Backfires Atefeh Ahmadi, 29, took a bold step recently. "Me and two of my friends went to the subway," the 29-year-old translator in Tehran told NPR. "We sat in the women-only car and sang a well-known feminist song. We also handed out pamphlets...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TANZANIA Bulldozing Hope Tanzanian President John Magufuli, popularly referred to as "the bulldozer" from his time as the nation's roads minister, was once viewed as an outsider capable of demolishing the deep-seated corruption that had long plagued one of Africa's most dynamic economies. But just three...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Big Boys Seventeen years ago, the term “BRIC” generated a lot of buzz. It was an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China – four large countries whose economies were making them increasingly important on the global stage. (South Africa joined the group later,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW WESTERN BALKANS 200 Years Away Part of a region that saw Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II, the six countries of the Western Balkans – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia and Albania – continue to face economic, geopolitical and legal challenges...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PAPUA NEW GUINEA Superstitions, Polio and Facebook Papua New Guinea is a study in contrasts. A theater group in the southwestern Pacific country is using street theater to teach citizens about tuberculosis, a scourge that kills around 10 people daily there. Drama is a modern, innovative public...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ISLAMIC STATE Long Fuses A series of explosions went off in southwestern Syria recently, killing more than 100 people and wounding almost 200 more. The deaths were not the result of the civil war that has been raging in the country for more than seven years,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ETHIOPIA/ERITREA An Olive Branch, and Thorns It's been a whirlwind few months for Ethiopia and Eritrea after the election of 42-year-old Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in April ushered in a rapprochement between these two feuding nations. In just a few months, leaders of the two...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MALI Guns and Butter More than five years ago, French soldiers defeated Islamic militants in Mali, paving the way for the central government in Bamako to reassert control over the country. But as Malians prepare for a presidential vote on Sunday, the jihadist threat remains real...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SOUTH SUDAN The Forever War Perpetual civil war has often seemed to be the fate of the people of South Sudan, where cease-fires and agreements come and go and the fighting grows ever more brutal. Another such deal is on the anvil this month, with the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PAKISTAN The Umpire’s Finger During sit-in protests against corruption in Islamabad in 2014, Pakistani cricketer turned politician Imran Khan liked to use a metaphor from the sport that made him famous. In Pakistan politics, he’d say, the army is like “the umpire’s finger,” referring to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CAMBODIA Fireflies and Powder Kegs Cambodian voters go to the polls on Sunday. Few believe anyone but Prime Minister Hun Sen will win, however. Indeed, most observers view the election as a total sham. Hun Sen, 65, has been in charge of the Southeast Asian country since 1985....
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW EUROPEAN UNION Winning to Lose It’s too early to say Brexit has been a failure. But even cautious voices could be forgiven for concluding Brexit has not gone as smoothly as its advocates forecast when Brits voted in 2016 to quit the European Union in...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ZIMBABWE A Crocodile's Tears For the first time, Zimbabweans will vote this month on a presidential ballot that does not include ex-president Robert Mugabe. Mugabe, who turned 94 this year, was ousted from office in November after ruling for 37 years. The campaign has been more open...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GUATEMALA Fact or Fiction? What do Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Russian state bank VTB and the United Nation's anti-corruption International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) all have in common? Namely, the Bitkov family, who have sparked an international firestorm that threatens to topple an...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ISRAEL End Days Maybe Benjamin Netanyahu, or “Bibi,” leads the Jewish state at a dangerous time. Iran’s influence is growing. The antagonistic Syrian regime has almost won its civil war. Relations with the Palestinians remain abysmal. And Israel’s defenders in the US and Europe face an...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SOUTH KOREA Hard Day's Night Last year, the Singapore newspaper, the Straits Times, followed a few young professionals in South Korea whose accounts of the nation's backbreaking work culture are enough to fatigue even the most tireless of Western workaholics. Corporate culture in South Korea values...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA Friends and Foes Before he left for Europe, President Donald Trump reflected on his busy agenda for the upcoming week: meeting British politicians amid the Brexit crisis, NATO leaders whom he berated for paying too little for their defense and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Frankly,...
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