NEED TO KNOW KYRGYZSTAN The Outlier The political climate in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan is little known to even the most well-informed outside the region. But this former-Soviet, predominately Muslim nation of 6 million, far removed from traditional democracies like the United States and those in Europe,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AUSTRIA They’re Back Austria’s presidential election last year was a knock-down, drag-out fight between former Green Party leader Alexander Van der Bellen and Norbert Hofer, a rightwing nationalist with alleged Nazi sympathies. Van der Bellen’s victory was ballyhooed as a defeat of the xenophobes and far-right...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW BANGLADESH The Risky Burden More than half a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have flooded into neighboring Bangladesh since late August, when the Burmese military began its crackdown on the Rohingya in their native Rakhine State in response to a rebel attack against government forces. With...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Liberia Personality Politics Liberians take to the polls Tuesday in a historic election that marks the first time in 73 years that a democratically elected leader in this West African nation will peacefully relinquish power to another elected president. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the African continent's...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SAUDI ARABIA Dynamic or Desperate? The recent attack by a lone gunman on Saudi Arabian King Salman’s summer palace in Jeddah was a reminder that the desert kingdom is a powder keg even as the king projects an image of rock-solid stability. Royal guards quickly foiled...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SWEDEN New Song and Dance Last month, Sweden conducted its largest set of war games in two decades, mobilizing some 19,000 troops with support from NATO countries. Normally neutral Sweden hasn't fought a war in centuries and has systematically cut military and defense spending to about...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GUATEMALA One Comedian, Zero Laughs In 2015, actor and comedian Jimmy Morales won the Guatemalan presidency in a landslide with 67 percent of the vote. His status as a political outsider fueled his cruise to victory after then-President Otto Perez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TOGO Of Witchcraft, Protests and WhatsApp The killing of a cow in Kparatao, Togo, explains a lot about the unstable situation in this tiniest of West African countries. Troops loyal to embattled President Faure Gnassingbé were sweeping the village for weapons recently when they shot the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MIDDLE EAST Pulling the Tightrope An alliance between Iraq and Iran has long worried American officials. Now the US’s arguably closest ally in the region – Kurdistan – might be the catalyst that unites Baghdad and Tehran. In the wake of 93 percent of Kurdish voters opting...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NORTH KOREA You Wanna Start Something? The foreign minister of North Korea, Ri Yong Ho, recently told the United Nations General Assembly that a nuclear attack against the United States was “inevitable” if the insults between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PORTUGAL No Time To Relax A few years ago, many young Portuguese tried to get out of the country, hungry for opportunities and looking to the former colonies of Angola and Brazil. That's because Portugal was one of the worst hit countries in Europe during the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN Faltering Spirits There’s grumbling that Afghanistan is becoming America’s second Vietnam – a comparison the Concord Monitor recently made in a column that reads at first like a review of the recently released Ken Burns documentary about the conflict that ran from 1955 to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW YEMEN Going Nowhere Fast On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week, officials painted a grim picture of the situation in the besieged and poverty-stricken country of Yemen. "The prescription for the future at the very best is bleak," said Jamie McGoldrick, the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SPAIN Breaking Up Is Hard To Do With its own language, a history of independence dating back to the Middle Ages, and a thriving economy, the Catalonia region has plenty of reasons to dream about splitting from Spain. But when voters go to the polls for...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GERMANY Sturm und Drang There were no surprises in German elections Sunday. The earth didn't tremble. The world order remained intact. And yet, there was a seismic shift. Angela Merkel will remain chancellor for another four years, the longest-serving leader in Europe, and the first to lead...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GERMANY Breaking the Silence The expected lack of a surprise is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of German elections on Sunday. Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative Christian Democrats lead their closest competitor, the center-left Social Democrats, by 17 points, all but guaranteeing that Merkel’s party...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NEW ZEALAND Rock Stars and Maniacs With fewer than 5 million citizens and an isolated location in the southwestern Pacific, New Zealand doesn’t often figure as a major player in global affairs. But the breathtaking island nation has more to offer than top fly-fishing and scenery...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW INDIA Dispel the Darkness Last week, thousands of Indians joined a Nobel-winning advocate of children’s rights for the first leg of what promises to be the world’s largest march against the trafficking and sexual abuse of children. Led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CAMBODIA The Corner, the Bogeyman Authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia has been ratcheting up his anti-American rhetoric lately. Most recently, he called on the United States to pull Peace Corps volunteers out of Cambodia after the US embassy issued a warning to Americans traveling...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW KURDISTAN Waiting for a Country Many warned years ago that Iraq could split apart in the wake of the United States toppling ruthless strongman Saddam Hussein. Now, after the American invasion, internecine violence, Iranian intrusions and the rise and fall of the Islamic State, the Kurds...
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