NEED TO KNOW SYRIA The Indispensable Nation Is Russia the indispensable nation in the Middle East? Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Sean McFate thinks so. Pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and other steps by the administration of US President Donald Trump have undercut...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ERITREA Bald Men, Combs and Despots Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki delivered a powerful speech last month to mark the 25th anniversary of his country’s independence from Ethiopia. “We have confronted the myriad tentacles of adversity with patience, resilience and strong defiance,” he told citizens in Asmara...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CRIMEA From Russia with Love Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin opened a $4-billon bridge linking mainland Russia with the annexed Crimean peninsula in a polished television event typical of the newly re-elected president's trademark machismo. With Russian oligarchs in tow, a jeans-clad Putin climbed into...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW INDONESIA ‘A Truly Horrible Precedent’ Militants in the Islamic State are celebrating their first Ramadan since their terror organization lost control of most of the territory they seized in Iraq and Syria in recent years. It’s not a coincidence that the group’s chapters in Indonesia have...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW HUNGARY Illiberalism and Endgames In April, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban secured a third consecutive parliamentary supermajority for his right-wing Fidesz party. Now, just two months later, he's making good on the anti-immigration promises that delivered him a win in the first place – and challenging...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHINA A Test of Faith Residents of Youtong, a village in northern China, face a perilous choice when opting for a Catholic church. Half of Youtong’s 5,000 residents are Roman Catholics, a faith that has an estimated 12 million members in China. Villagers can worship at the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW BRAZIL Send in the Clowns Last week, Brazil's embattled president, Michel Temer, officially dropped out of the nation's presidential election in October. Temer, who took over the post in 2016 after President Dilma Rousseff was ousted on charges of tampering with the federal budget, isn't the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AFGHANISTAN Harvest of Woes An Afghan bomb squad recently tried but failed to defuse an explosive device in a car parked in an auto repair garage in Kandahar. Sixteen people, including four security officers, perished when the device detonated. Another 38 were wounded, including children. Interestingly,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRAQ Waiting on a Comeback The ascent of Muqtada al-Sadr is the latest bizarre turn in Iraq’s tumultuous politics, as the country scrambles to cobble together a government. Al-Sadr has adopted many roles in recent Iraqi history, including years on end when he disappeared from public...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SPAIN Checkmate Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is in the throes of a political migraine – and it's not only due to the persistence of separatists in the semi-autonomous region of Catalonia. On Friday, the nation's primary opposition Socialist Party called for a vote of no...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRELAND A New Country Today Irish voters decide whether they keep the eighth amendment of their constitution, which bans abortion in most cases. The referendum has triggered soul-searching discussions about the country’s origins and future, wrote Mashable. Many women shared heart-rending stories of traveling to Britain,...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW COLOMBIA The Way We Were The Colombian government’s 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was supposed to help the South American country end a 52-year-long insurgency that claimed as many as 220,000 lives, and move beyond it. Now it appears as...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ITALY It's Alive! German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron may have been able to stave off populist, eurosceptic political forces in their nations' respective elections last year. But in Italy, pegged to become the EU's third-largest economy once the United Kingdom departs from...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW GAZA Dreaming a Different Day Ahmad Abu Artema describes himself as a dreamer. "I looked up at the birds in the sky, flying through the trees on both sides of the barbed wire fence without being stopped,” he told CNN. “What is simpler than this? The...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW MALAYSIA A Shimmering Light Just days before Malaysians took to the polls to elect a new parliament this month, political analysts were fairly certain that Prime Minister Najib Razak, a member of an influential Malaysian political dynasty who'd been in power since 2008, would lead...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW VENEZUELA Force and Change Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro learned politics under Hugo Chavez, the socialist firebrand who served as the South American country’s leader from 1999 until his death in 2013. Chavez was democratically elected, but Canada’s Globe and Mail described him as an authoritarian...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CHAD Off the Blacklist Citizens of Chad are able to once again enter the United States after President Trump removed the predominantly Muslim, Central African nation from the list of countries falling under his controversial travel ban. The reversal was a calculated decision, as Chad counterterrorism...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NICARAGUA 'We Are Nicaragua' When the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua overthrew President Anastasio Somoza in 1979, ending an almost 40-year family dictatorship, and arranged for the country's first free elections in 1984, the Sandinistas hoped their presidential candidate, Daniel Ortega, would lead the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ARMENIA From Prisoner to Premier Armenian journalist Nikol Pashinyan was kicked out of college in 1995 for his political activities, and was charged with libel in 2000 during his tenure as editor-in-chief of a liberal daily critical of the government. He then faced an assassination attempt...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW UNITED KINGDOM The Ties that Bind The Sackler family of London derives its wealth from manufacturing OxyContin and other opioids. They’re known around the British capital as jet-setting philanthropists and business leaders. But for years, the Sacklers’ private companies have been routing sales through Bermuda, a...
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