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...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW No Exit Frequently overlooked compared to the Syrian civil war and the wider battle against the Islamic State, the conflict in Yemen briefly burst into the news last week following a botched American raid on an al Qaeda compound. As Yemen withdrew its permission for...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Road to Nowhere Since the 2009 military coup d’état that ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous and unjust countries in the world. "The beneficiaries of corruption are the political and business elite who use criminal means to take...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Chutes and Ladders War on the Russian-Ukrainian border has arguably been NATO's biggest concern in Europe since 2014. On Tuesday, after fighting in the pro-Russian separatist republics in Eastern Ukraine flared up once again last week, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Tug of War With the world focused on the plight of millions of refugees displaced by the Syrian Civil War, it's easy to forget the ongoing power struggle in Afghanistan. That’s a mistake. On Monday, the United Nations claimed that nearly 3,500 Afghan civilians died and...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW A Wave of Civic Creativity Democracy still works, at least in Romania. On Sunday, Romanian protesters remained on the streets of Bucharest and elsewhere despite their apparent victory the day before, when the government scrapped a controversial decree that would have weakened corruption laws in...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW The Trump Doctrine Last week, when US President Donald Trump issued his order banning refugees, he kicked a hornet’s nest with the stroke of his pen. Now he’s causing chaos with his phone, quipped Politico on Thursday, a busy day for the leader of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW In the Shadows The countries of Central Asia – think Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan – rarely, if ever, make headlines around the world. The international press briefly alighted in Kazakhstan last month. But that was because it hosted a two-day conference...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW Friends and Foes After months of fighting, the Iraqi government declared it had finally retaken control of eastern Mosul from the Islamic State last week. The Atlantic ran a photo essay of the destruction wrought by the violence on Tuesday. Now the Iraqi army is prepping...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW R.I.P. TPP With the flick of a pen, US President Donald Trump last week made good on his campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP. A landmark free-trade proposal between 12 countries across three continents, the TPP...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW An Order Heard Round the World As protesters swarmed airports in the United States and foreign permanent residents and visa holders found themselves rebuffed as they attempted to board US-bound airplanes, world leaders were also for the most part dismayed over the weekend...
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