NEED TO KNOW UKRAINE Not Quiet on the Eastern Front The fighting continues between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine despite a ceasefire. Though the conflict has largely fallen out of the news, a few soldiers and civilians are regularly killed or injured in Donbass, the region...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ASIA More Than Silk and Spices Leaders from Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan last month opened the long-awaited, 525-mile-long Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railway, a crucial link in China's revival of the ancient Silk Road. With this new link through the Caucasus, tens of millions of tons of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRAQ What Comes After The prime minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi, recently said the combination of Iraqi government troops, US-led air strikes and Iran-backed militias had defeated the Islamic State in military terms. The jihadists’ army had collapsed, he said. They no longer held big cities...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SOUTH AFRICA A Promise, Betrayed The imminent fall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe has raised serious questions about the future of Jacob Zuma, the president of neighboring South Africa. Both men have presided over corruption and economic decline, and both have lost the confidence of the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GERMANY Angela's Choice As German Chancellor Angela Merkel's exploratory talks to form an unprecedented coalition between four vastly different political parties ripped apart last week, many in the country and outside began mulling life after "Mutti." To write off Merkiavelli would be a big mistake. Merkel has...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NEPAL A Dam, A Vote, A Future Until 2006, the Nepal government was mired in a decade-long war against Maoist rebels that killed more than 16,000 people. Over the past nine years, the country has created a constitution – in 2015. But it also has seen...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Dear Readers, Today is Thanksgiving Day in America, a time of gatherings, feasting and gratitude across this vast nation and among our compatriots across the world. To celebrate, we are taking a respite from the world's troubles and, instead, offering a special essay to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW VENEZUELA A Drizzle, then a Storm Venezuela hasn't bottomed out just yet – but it's close. Last week, the country failed to make about $280 million in loan repayments, triggering Standard & Poor's to categorize Venezuela as a nation in "selective default," the Washington Post reported. That's...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW DENMARK A Little Hygge – For Foreigners, Too At a time when America is building a wall on the Mexican border, Britain is quitting the European Union partly due to immigration and Germany has been cooling its welcoming policy towards refugees, Denmark is an outlier. The...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ZIMBABWE The King Is Dead… For 37 years, one man ruled supreme. And for the struggling youth of Zimbabwe like Ethel Murehwa, he's the only leader she's ever known. The unthinkable has now happened, she told USA Today. He's gone. And she feels hope. Over the weekend,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHILE The Pendulum Chile's Nov. 19 presidential election will likely cement a trend in South America of right-wing business types ousting left-wing premiers who came to power at the turn of the millennium, according to the Brookings Institution. But where Chile differs from its neighbors is...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SYRIA Cautious Starts Syrian government forces shook the Islamic State from their last urban foothold in Syria this month – the eastern provincial capital of Deir al-Zour – calling into question what's next for this besieged nation. Some would like to believe Islamic State is on...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRELAND Hope, and a Hard Place Ireland's newest prime minister, Leo Varadkar, 38, recently joined the ranks of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron as yet another young leader looking to shake up the status quo. To some, Varadkar symbolizes that Ireland...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW INTERPOL The Long Arm of the Law The International Criminal Police Organization, better known as Interpol, extends the long arm of the law around the globe. But a few recent cases have revealed how dictators might use the organization to lengthen their reach, too. Late last...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AFRICA Whack-a-Mole Early this month, for the first time ever, the United States launched airstrikes against the Islamic State in Somalia. A few days later, the United Nations issued a report saying that around 200 jihadists had joined the Islamic State in Puntland, a semi-independent region...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ASIA The Forest and Trees As President Donald Trump embarked on his first tour of Asia since taking office, some wondered how the trip would play out. The president's harsh critiques of long-time regional allies, his "America first" reversal of his predecessor's pivot to Asia, his...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW LEBANON A Fragile Mirror The bizarre snap resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri over the weekend has shattered the illusion that regional rivalries were at a stalemate, and left many nervously wondering what's next. "The Middle East is nearing an explosion," wrote the Atlantic Wednesday. That's...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SPAIN Spanish Netherlands It was ironic that Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and other officials of the would-be independent republic would flee to Belgium, a country also known as the Spanish Netherlands until around 300 years ago. On Tuesday, a Belgian judge released Puigdemont and ministers in...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SAUDI ARABIA A Game of Thrones Saudi police apprehended more than 30 princes, tycoons, clerics and other elites in the past few days, putting some in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh where they are still confined in “opulent digs,” the Guardian reported. King Salman also banned...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NIGER Diplomats and Bombs The deaths of four Green Berets and five local soldiers in Niger last month have led many to ask why the United States military is operating in a country that many Americans couldn’t find on a map. The simple answer is that...
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