NEED TO KNOW GERMANY Follow the Leader It took six months and two rounds of brutal negotiations with almost every political party the nation has, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel finally formed a government earlier this month with allies she’d partnered with twice before, the center-left Social Democrats. The...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW TURKEY Operation Standoff Two months after Turkey launched a ground offensive against Kurdish strongholds in northern Syria, it claimed victory over Afrin, a western province that had been squarely under Kurdish control. But as Turkey continues to flex its muscles in Syria, pushing across the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MEXICO Bombs on the Beach Spring breakers were avoiding Playa del Carmen in Mexico after the US State Department issued a security warning about the popular Caribbean resort. “Passengers are definitely steering away and concerned,” Olga Ramudo, who runs a Florida travel agency, told USA Today. Mexican...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW BORNEO Got a Light? A video of an orangutan smoking a cigarette in an Indonesian zoo went viral recently. It’s funny to see a great ape smoking, of course. But anyone who doesn’t second-guess their amusement needs to consider the abuse occurring here. Many have already done so....
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Emperors and Old Clothes Nawa Punyo joined a rally recently with other Roman Catholics in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to demand that President Joseph Kabila resign. “Kabila has been playing around for long enough; it’s time for...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NETHERLANDS The Inconvenient Voice Hopeful in their aspirations but fearful of humankind’s darkest instincts, America’s founding fathers were suspicious of democracy. They opted, therefore, to create a democratic republic, mixing the franchise with a government of checks and balances. Today, the Netherlands is grappling with similar...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW RUSSIA No Nail-Biting Here In a shockingly close vote, Russian President Vladimir Putin narrowly won reelection on Sunday, suggesting he will be a diminished leader in the coming years. That was a joke. Or Fake News. Nothing about the above sentence is true. The reality is that...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW LIBYA The Curse of Black Gold Earlier this month, Libya's massive El Sharara oil field, which supplies about a quarter of national output, halted production for a little over 24 hours. It was a crippling blow to a nation where oil accounts for 95 percent of...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW BOLIVIA The Shoe is on the Other Foot In what could be the first case of its kind, a US federal court in Fort Lauderdale is hearing allegations of human-rights abuses brought against a former foreign head of state. Bolivian ex-President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada stands...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHINA For Better or For Worse After seven decades of strained relations, the Vatican and China are nearing a rapprochement deal to allow Beijing’s communist leadership to appoint bishops for official recognition by the Holy See. It's a move critics say sells out China's estimated 12...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SIERRA LEONE After the Plague A few years ago, Sierra Leone was in the headlines as a terrifying outbreak of the Ebola virus struck the tiny West African country. Today, as Sierra Leoneans await the results of their March 7 presidential election, it’s worth taking stock...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SOUTH KOREA Us Too The global reaction to #MeToo has been mixed. The French have been decidedly skeptical of women calling out men for sexual harassment, USA Today reported. In Pakistan, the rape and murder of 7-year-old Zainab Ansari in January triggered a wave of “#MeToo-style declarations,”...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MACEDONIA What's in a Name Since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the tiny Balkan country has struggled to overcome Greek objections to an aspect of its national character that’s hard to change: its name. Technically, the country’s name is the Former Yugoslav...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NATO Smoke, Mirrors, Bombs The German Press Agency recently ran a story with a headline that translates as “The German military lacks winter clothing for NATO’s eastern front.” The article described how German troops in NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force – a unit established...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SINAI Secrets and Lies In early February, the New York Times reported that a secret alliance between Egypt and Israel was underway to eradicate Islamic militants from their stronghold in Egypt's loosely governed North Sinai region. But as Egypt steps up its assaults against the militants...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN Open Letters and Bloodshed Barnett Rubin, a former American diplomat and veteran scholar of Afghanistan, recently wrote an open letter in the New Yorker to the Taliban asking them to "begin the long-delayed peace talks that Afghans deserve." But what unfolded as the week continued showed...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ITALY A Tattered Playbook When Italians go to the polls March 4, the elections are not going to be about bunga-bunga politicians or even clowns. They are going to be about Italy's next government – and especially whether it wants to play ball with the European...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SYRIA High-Stakes Game Islamic State may be all but eradicated from its strongholds in Syria, but that doesn't mean tensions have subsided between outside players in the Syrian conflict. In fact, quite the opposite has happened, CNBC reported. It's been seven years since pro-democracy protests in Syria...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW INDIA Riding Coattails India recently released its 2018 Economic Survey outlining the success of the economic liberalization strategies that have effectively quadrupled the nation’s economy since 1991, making it the world's third-largest economy behind China and the United States, the Washington Post reported. But as...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW BRAZIL He’s Back The Brazilian army has taken over security in the crime-ridden favelas of Rio de Janeiro. “Police are unable to handle the situation,” Felicya Oliveira, a 31-year-old restaurant worker who often misses shifts because of gunfights outside her door, told Bloomberg. “So let’s see...
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