NEED TO KNOW VENEZUELA Force and Change Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro learned politics under Hugo Chavez, the socialist firebrand who served as the South American country’s leader from 1999 until his death in 2013. Chavez was democratically elected, but Canada’s Globe and Mail described him as an authoritarian...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHAD Off the Blacklist Citizens of Chad are able to once again enter the United States after President Trump removed the predominantly Muslim, Central African nation from the list of countries falling under his controversial travel ban. The reversal was a calculated decision, as Chad counterterrorism...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NICARAGUA 'We Are Nicaragua' When the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua overthrew President Anastasio Somoza in 1979, ending an almost 40-year family dictatorship, and arranged for the country's first free elections in 1984, the Sandinistas hoped their presidential candidate, Daniel Ortega, would lead the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ARMENIA From Prisoner to Premier Armenian journalist Nikol Pashinyan was kicked out of college in 1995 for his political activities, and was charged with libel in 2000 during his tenure as editor-in-chief of a liberal daily critical of the government. He then faced an assassination attempt...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW UNITED KINGDOM The Ties that Bind The Sackler family of London derives its wealth from manufacturing OxyContin and other opioids. They’re known around the British capital as jet-setting philanthropists and business leaders. But for years, the Sacklers’ private companies have been routing sales through Bermuda, a...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRAQ A Different Song and Dance As if geopolitical happenings in Iraq weren't complex enough, Sunday's parliamentary elections – the nation's fourth since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein – pit some 6,990 candidates from 87 political parties against one another for the control...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW WORLD The Unending Debate Members of the Irish rock band U2 recently came out in favor of repealing abortion prohibitions outlined in the eighth amendment of Ireland’s constitution – a question voters will decide in a May 25 referendum. U2 deliberately announced its position and chose...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW EUROPEAN UNION The Grass of Elephants Just before they were scheduled to expire, US President Donald Trump extended stays on steel and aluminum tariffs of 25 and 10 percent, respectively, on the European Union and other key American allies last week – but only for...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ARGENTINA Pendulum Swing When Equity International, Goldman Sachs and Centaurus Capital announced an Argentinian real-estate deal worth $300 million in early April, they did so with confidence that President Mauricio Macri’s liberalization efforts would finally stabilize the nation’s volatile economy. But Macri’s moves to kickstart markets...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NORTH KOREA A Nobel Idea North and South Korean troops have removed loudspeakers that blared propaganda at each other from the opposing sides of the demilitarized zone on their border. The moves were the first tangible goodwill gestures that arose from the historic meeting late last...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SAUDI ARABIA Cognitive Dissonance It’s hard to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind simultaneously. Yet that is what Saudi Arabian leaders are hoping their citizens will embrace in the coming years. The desert kingdom is an absolute monarchy that follows ultra-orthodox Islamic law. But recently Saudi King...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW INDONESIA Motion Sickness Indonesia, the world's third-largest democracy, is developing at breakneck speeds. Since the ouster of longtime dictator General Muhammad Suharto in 1998 and the nation's first democratic elections in 2004, Indonesia's extremely diverse 261 million citizens have enjoyed more political freedoms than ever before. After...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRAQ Mystic Chords of Memory The financial crisis, the rise of the Islamic State and the success of right-wing movements around the world make it easy to forget another controversy that dominated global headlines 15 years ago and arguably remains alive today: the American invasion...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW COLOMBIA More Than Words 2018 hasn't been the best year for the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC. A November 2016 peace deal with the Marxist rebel group ended a 52-year conflict in Colombia that had left over 200,000 people dead and...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AZERBAIJAN The Birth of a Nation When it was founded in 1918, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was one of the first democracies in the Muslim world. But that status was short-lived. Soviet Russia absorbed Azerbaijan into its sphere of influence only two years later. Today, after a...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW JAPAN On the Sidelines At their meeting in President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the US president played golf and ate cheeseburgers, wrote Bloomberg. But Abe left the resort with little to show for his time. He and Trump...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW UZBEKISTAN On Defrost For 27 years, Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov regularly jailed and tortured dissenters, threatened citizens with a mighty surveillance apparatus and stifled independent media – long after the shadow of the Iron Curtain had been dispelled in other former Soviet states. After Karimov’s death...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SIERRA LEONE Deep Dive Sierra Leone recently swore in newly elected President Julius Maada Bio, a retired military commander and leader of the nation's opposition Sierra Leone People's Party, who won 51.8 percent of the vote in a March 31 runoff. Observers hailed Bio's victory, saying...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ISRAEL A Bittersweet Journey The 70th anniversary of Israel led to a bevy of bittersweet coverage in the news. Shmuel Rosner believed that now was among the best periods for his people, a time that rivaled that of Moses, the kingdom of Solomon and Spain’s Golden...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CUBA The Ties That Bind When the Washington Post's reporter asked Cubans about their hopes for the nation after the announcement last week that 57-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel was poised to become the first non-Castro leader of the island in nearly 60 years, many had trouble...
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