NEED TO KNOW Known Unknowns To explain the ongoing confusion over the United Kingdom’s plans to exit the European Union – a.k.a. “Brexit” – the BBC's political editor was forced to reach back to the absurd-yet-profound locution of former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "There are known...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Running of Maduro To say that 2016 has been a rocky year for Venezuela would be an understatement. Against a backdrop of falling oil prices – the primary source of the country's revenues – Venezuelans have had to put up with shortages of nearly...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Cops for Hire Mexico is taking lawlessness to whole new levels. Gangs and drug money suffuse the Mexican police, courts and other government institutions to the point where many victims believe they'll never find justice without help from outside the country. Citing a recent report by...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Disappointment in Plain Sight Morocco's King Mohammed VI asked Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane to form a new government on Monday after Benkirane's Justice and Development Party, or PJD, won the largest share of votes in parliamentary elections last Friday. Benkirane's victory is an opportunity to...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Shot in the Arm When US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Prize in 2009 – nine months after he assumed office – it was obvious that the Norwegians were giving the new young president a shot in the arm as he assumed...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The New Solidarity Poland's fight for freedom may have started with a labor movement. But like many other countries of the former Soviet bloc, it has become steadily more conservative since the Solidarity movement ushered in democracy in 1989. Until now, perhaps. Following a wave of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Not Over It Yet Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe, recently delivered a pleasant message to the people of New Zealand. "It's a very, very relaxed atmosphere there, it's a quite open society today and fear is no longer a factor," Wickremesinghe told Radio New...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Maintaining Distances The vote in Colombia to reject a long-negotiated peace deal was one of a handful of recent referendums throughout the world that, like Brexit, were largely victories for those in favor of maintaining distances between different peoples. Asked if referendums were good ideas,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Back to Square One International donors meeting in Belgium starting Tuesday were preparing to open their checkbooks for the American-backed Afghan government in Kabul before events on Monday likely gave them pause. Taliban fighters surrounded Kunduz on four sides, penetrating the center of the 275,000-population...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Fumbled Hexit Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has suffered an embarrassment in his duel with Brussels. In a referendum in Hungary on Sunday, voters nearly unanimously chose to reject the European Union’s resettlement plan for the more than one million Syrians and other refugees...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW India’s Forever War Since the bloody Partition of India in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought four full-fledged wars – including three centered on Kashmir. And the intervening periods might better be described as lulls in the fighting, rather than peace. To be sure, many...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Duplicitous Doppelgänger Europe is often seen as a stalwart of democratic principles, far-reaching liberal values and human rights. But on its eastern-most periphery lies a small, often overlooked country, governed by one man, President Alexander Lukashenko, for the past 22 years – virtually since...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Tinderbox Election officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo need to work faster. The sprawling, mineral-rich Central African country was due to hold a vote in November to replace incumbent President Joseph Kabila. Election officials, though, want to postpone the ballot. They say they won't...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW China’s Problem to Solve At the first head-to-head presidential debate on Monday night, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said China should be solving the "problem" of North Korea. The Donald said a lot last night. But, at least on this issue, he’s got a point. As...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Learning Peace Week-long celebrations concluded Friday in the Yari Plains of the southern Colombian savannah as fighters from the Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, came to a unanimous decision about the future of their movement. Starting Monday, they will become...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Bouncing Bozo Remember when Oliver North was on TV every day to discuss US chicanery in Nicaragua? No? That’s because the Senate hearings on the so-called Iran-Contra affair took place nearly 30 years ago. One guy who remembers them well, however, is Nicaragua’s 70-year-old...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Resentment and Tulips At first, Ethiopians protested for minority rights. Now it's tulips. Protests in the country started in early summer. But the latest violence, which broke out at the end of August, is an escalation in the worst civil strife that Ethiopia has seen...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Of Balconies and Airstrikes Early on Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry was insisting that the ceasefire in Syria that he negotiated with Russia was still alive despite numerous breaches of the agreement. "The ceasefire is not dead," Kerry told Reuters in New York, where...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Bright Spot Jordan has taken a stride in distancing itself from the political and humanitarian tumult of its neighbors in the region. On Tuesday, the kingdom is slated to hold parliamentary elections under new rules that expand representation to parties outside of ruler King...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Business As Usual After the attacks in the US over the weekend, the American presidential election is likely to become more contentious as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump jockey over the threat of terrorism. In Russia, the debates are more one-sided. "The Kremlin is feeling quite...
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