NEED TO KNOW IRAQ A Different Song and Dance As if geopolitical happenings in Iraq weren't complex enough, Sunday's parliamentary elections – the nation's fourth since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein – pit some 6,990 candidates from 87 political parties against one another for the control...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW WORLD The Unending Debate Members of the Irish rock band U2 recently came out in favor of repealing abortion prohibitions outlined in the eighth amendment of Ireland’s constitution – a question voters will decide in a May 25 referendum. U2 deliberately announced its position and chose...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW EUROPEAN UNION The Grass of Elephants Just before they were scheduled to expire, US President Donald Trump extended stays on steel and aluminum tariffs of 25 and 10 percent, respectively, on the European Union and other key American allies last week – but only for...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ARGENTINA Pendulum Swing When Equity International, Goldman Sachs and Centaurus Capital announced an Argentinian real-estate deal worth $300 million in early April, they did so with confidence that President Mauricio Macri’s liberalization efforts would finally stabilize the nation’s volatile economy. But Macri’s moves to kickstart markets...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW NORTH KOREA A Nobel Idea North and South Korean troops have removed loudspeakers that blared propaganda at each other from the opposing sides of the demilitarized zone on their border. The moves were the first tangible goodwill gestures that arose from the historic meeting late last...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SAUDI ARABIA Cognitive Dissonance It’s hard to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind simultaneously. Yet that is what Saudi Arabian leaders are hoping their citizens will embrace in the coming years. The desert kingdom is an absolute monarchy that follows ultra-orthodox Islamic law. But recently Saudi King...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW INDONESIA Motion Sickness Indonesia, the world's third-largest democracy, is developing at breakneck speeds. Since the ouster of longtime dictator General Muhammad Suharto in 1998 and the nation's first democratic elections in 2004, Indonesia's extremely diverse 261 million citizens have enjoyed more political freedoms than ever before. After...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW IRAQ Mystic Chords of Memory The financial crisis, the rise of the Islamic State and the success of right-wing movements around the world make it easy to forget another controversy that dominated global headlines 15 years ago and arguably remains alive today: the American invasion...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW COLOMBIA More Than Words 2018 hasn't been the best year for the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC. A November 2016 peace deal with the Marxist rebel group ended a 52-year conflict in Colombia that had left over 200,000 people dead and...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW AZERBAIJAN The Birth of a Nation When it was founded in 1918, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was one of the first democracies in the Muslim world. But that status was short-lived. Soviet Russia absorbed Azerbaijan into its sphere of influence only two years later. Today, after a...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW JAPAN On the Sidelines At their meeting in President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the US president played golf and ate cheeseburgers, wrote Bloomberg. But Abe left the resort with little to show for his time. He and Trump...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW UZBEKISTAN On Defrost For 27 years, Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov regularly jailed and tortured dissenters, threatened citizens with a mighty surveillance apparatus and stifled independent media – long after the shadow of the Iron Curtain had been dispelled in other former Soviet states. After Karimov’s death...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SIERRA LEONE Deep Dive Sierra Leone recently swore in newly elected President Julius Maada Bio, a retired military commander and leader of the nation's opposition Sierra Leone People's Party, who won 51.8 percent of the vote in a March 31 runoff. Observers hailed Bio's victory, saying...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW ISRAEL A Bittersweet Journey The 70th anniversary of Israel led to a bevy of bittersweet coverage in the news. Shmuel Rosner believed that now was among the best periods for his people, a time that rivaled that of Moses, the kingdom of Solomon and Spain’s Golden...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW CUBA The Ties That Bind When the Washington Post's reporter asked Cubans about their hopes for the nation after the announcement last week that 57-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel was poised to become the first non-Castro leader of the island in nearly 60 years, many had trouble...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW INDIA R-E-S-P-E-C-T Americans debate often about affirmative action and racial quotas in schools and the workplace. Those debates have sometimes unfortunately turned violent, but they have also sparked social revolutions. India is going through the same thing. Recently, eight people died in protests that erupted after the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW PARAGUAY Bucking the Trend The next stop on the super-election train running through South America this year is Paraguay, where citizens take to the polls April 22 to elect their next president. Paraguay has long been a bastion of conservatism and neoliberal policies. Since the nation's...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SUDAN Healing Divisions ABC News had an amazing piece on an American doctor who works in the Nuba Mountains, a remote, war-torn region of Sudan. The same doctor is featured in a documentary, “The Heart of Nuba,” recently released in US theaters. The doctor, Tom Catena, treats...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW FRANCE Coup de Grace French President Emmanuel Macron's calls for overarching labor and fiscal reforms are quickly turning into a culture war, as evidenced by ongoing protests that continue to cripple French society. After being elected on promises to liberalize the French economy and harmonize the...
Read full story →NEED TO KNOW SYRIA Friends and Enemies American, British and French air strikes against chemical weapons facilities in Syria understandably dominated the headlines this weekend. But the long-term consequences of surgical attacks near Damascus and Homs might be slight. The relatively modest strikes probably avoided heightening tensions between the US...
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