NEED TO KNOW Of Nukes and Wild Hogs Japanese foodies love wild boar meat. Unfortunately, they can't dine on the hundreds of boars roaming the environs of Fukushima, the town where an earthquake and tsunami caused its namesake nuclear power plant to melt down six years ago Saturday. The...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A State of Limbo The elections were due to take place in November. But the electoral commission said it didn’t know how many voters there were in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So it was given time, in spite of the outrage on...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Back in the Game After a few weeks of relative calm – following the contentious Navy SEAL raid that some US officials now say unfortunately yielded no significant intelligence – Yemen has once again become a US flashpoint. The US launched two consecutive days of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW On the Altar of Brexit Talks to salvage Northern Ireland's local government quickly deteriorated Monday as the Irish-nationalist party Sinn Fein demanded that the pro-British Democratic Unionists dismiss their leader, embattled Arlene Foster, as the province’s first minister, reported Reuters. It's a demand with teeth. That’s...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Guns Versus Butter Howls of derision greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decision to shoot for 6.5 percent economic growth this year at the annual National People’s Conference. That target is slightly less than last year’s growth of 6.7 percent – a 25-year-low for the world’s second-largest...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Disarmament, A Peace After more than 50 years of war, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) began turning in their weapons this week. Overseen by the United Nations, the disarmament was welcome news in a world driven by violence and seemingly intractable...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Weighted Scale In the ever-destabilizing Middle East, Iran has enjoyed a particularly good run of successful military and diplomatic power plays in recent years. Foremost among them was Tehran’s decision in 2011 to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his quest to reestablish...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Eternal Stagnation Greece's perennial sovereign debt crisis and the chaos surrounding Brexit frequently overshadow Italy's woes. But it might be time to pay closer attention to what's happening in Italy beyond the eruption of Mt. Etna on Sicily on Tuesday. An economic, rather than...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Waiting for Godot As the Geneva Conference for Human Rights and Dignity kicked off last week, many hoped the meeting would put an end to the bloody civil war in Syria that has killed 500,000 and displaced almost 12 million people over the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Keep Your Friends Close The recent “very painful” death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half-brother has sent geopolitical ripples throughout Asia. Estranged brother Kim Jong-nam died around 20 minutes after two women poisoned him at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia on...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Trouble with Monks The idyllic Thai island that Leonardo DiCaprio made famous in the 2000 film "The Beach" is as picturesque as ever. But that doesn’t mean all is right in the Southeast Asian kingdom. While tourists in beautiful Thailand enjoyed the sun and fun...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Deepening Chasm Hefty American sanctions against Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami last week came out of the blue. For more than a year, the world has been focused on the economic crisis that has struck the far-left, socialist country. Vox on Wednesday reported...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Third Time's the Charm The ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine brokered at the G20 Security Conference in Munich last weekend wasn't looking "too good" said Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Secretary General Lamberto Zannier on Tuesday, a day after the ceasefire was supposed...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Playing Catch Up Australia has garnered headlines recently, but not for the happy-go-lucky stories usually associated with the island nation. After US President Donald Trump dissed a refugee exchange deal between Australia and the previous American administration as "dumb" earlier this month, the Land Down...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Once More unto the Breach Near misses from sniper fire. Terrorists on suicide missions in bomb-filled, runaway cars. Narrow, ancient alleys where soldiers can’t ride in protective armored vehicles. Those are the dangers awaiting Iraqi soldiers who resumed the battle to take back Mosul from...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Legacy, Ideology and Votes The first round of Ecuador’s presidential election on Sunday isn’t really about the candidates running for office. It’s about the legacy of current President Rafael Correa. A leftwing economist, Correa decided not to run for reelection after three terms in office...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW No Gaps Right-wing Israelis celebrated after US President Donald Trump sloughed off the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Wednesday, calling into question years of American policy on the issue. “This is the end of an era,” said Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Fiddling While… The resignation of US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, earlier this week over questions about his communications with Russian officials was arguably the first hard evidence – not conjecture, not assertions – of Moscow’s meddling in American politics. Washington...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Lesser Evil As France's first-round presidential elections in April inch closer, three candidates have emerged. All of them are mired in scandal. Former frontrunner and conservative François Fillon, prime minister from 2007 until 2012, had been leading in the polls until a newspaper...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Hello Angry Japanese girls have striven to attain the kawaii, or cute, aura of Hello Kitty since the cartoonish feline character was invented in the 1970s. But on Sunday the BBC reported that a new character has become a more representative figure of Japan...
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